The Stand-In

by Deborah Moggach

  ‘They don’t even ask, can she act?’ said Lila. She looked out of the window. ‘I never went to college. I never had those conversations. We were real poor. I had my big break when I won this beauty contest. And I’ll tell you, hon, when you’re Miss New Jersey Dairy Products there’s nobody talking about The Duchess of Malfi.’ She laughed. ‘The only motivation they know is whether they can get their hands on your ass.’

  We sat for a while in silence. Finally we stopped outside my flat. Lila leant across and kissed me, impulsively. Then she turned away, and put on her dark glasses.

  The next day it felt unreal, as if it hadn’t happened. I once fucked a man in a bus shelter in Sidmouth. It was so dark I hardly saw his face, and the next morning it seemed so unlikely I couldn’t believe it had ever taken place. I only had my grazed backbone to remind me, and the sound of the sea in my ears.

  I felt like that on the Saturday morning. All I had was a headache from the champagne. It was partly because of our behaviour – Reece so pretentious, Trev so unctuous, me so diffident. Well, unctuous. None of us had seemed ourselves. She had made us false. She didn’t mean to, but she did. It was beyond her control, and she noticed nothing because that was how everybody behaved in her vicinity. Besides, the thought of her amongst those Irish alcoholics downstairs and those creaking leather jackets upstairs was so ludicrous in retrospect that I couldn’t connect it up. Why did I feel like this when she was only human?

  In those early days of knowing Lila I veered wildly. Shopping in Sainsburys I thought I couldn’t possibly have anything to offer her. Back home in my book-lined flat, misting my ferns, I felt strong and intelligent; I felt I could conquer the world. Just then, she was lucky to know me.

  Trev came to supper. It was a warm, sultry night. I felt curiously aroused; maybe it was the weather. I wore a dress I had made from Liberty cotton; underneath it, my legs were bare and smooth. I felt intensely female and for once he was with me, full-beam. He was alert and playful; he even scrubbed the potatoes. Why was he being so helpful, all of a sudden? I gave him poached salmon. I wanted to lock the door and keep him there; I wanted to feed him up and have him all to myself. Outside the window I heard the rumble of thunder.

  ‘It was weird,’ he said. ‘Just for a moment, when she came in, I thought it was you, all tarted up.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You never said you looked like each other.’

  ‘Do we?’

  ‘Then I realised.’

  I almost asked: was she more beautiful? I didn’t speak.

  He speared a lettuce leaf. ‘She’s older than I thought.’

  I smiled, pleased. ‘That’s because she’s stayed the same in your dreams. They have to stay the same.’

  He sipped his wine. I wanted to ask him more, but I didn’t dare.

  ‘To tell the truth, it made her sexier,’ he said. ‘Her face. She wasn’t so perfect.’

  ‘You going to hog all the salad?’ I asked, abruptly.

  Later, in bed, I turned my back to him. He stroked me, and breathed into my ear. After a few moments he turned away, sighing.

  I spoke into the darkness. ‘Have you ever pretended I was someone else?’

  ‘All the time. How else could I get it up?’

  ‘Have you?’

  He nodded. ‘Tonight you’re Mrs Thatcher. Can’t you tell?’

  ‘Have you?’ I persisted. ‘When you can’t see, but you can only touch?’

  ‘I’ll touch you if you’ll let me.’

  ‘Have you pretended I’m someone else?’

  ‘Oh shut up!’

  ‘You have!’ I stared at the glimmering rectangle of the window-blind. The thunder rumbled.

  ‘Listen, nit-face . . .’ He stopped.

  I lay rigid.

  ‘You’re an impossible bloody woman,’ he said.

  ‘You had those photos up.’

  ‘What photos?’

  ‘In your bedroom. When you were young.’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘Is it?’ I asked.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Jules.’

  I didn’t speak. After a moment his breathing deepened. I realised he had gone to sleep. Outside the rain began, drumming against the chimney pots on my balcony.

  I dreamed I was back at home in Arundel, but the house was six storeys high. I was in my nightie, leaning over the banisters. Down at the bottom of the stairwell, a long way below, lay Lila. Her backbone must be broken; she stirred, feebly. She was a small figure, squirming, in a white dress. She looked like a butterfly, and somebody had trodden on her. I knew I should be going down to help her, but I couldn’t move.

  Some time later Trev, only half-awake, started coaxing me with his hands. I turned, blindly, and we made love without a word, our mouths glued together. Afterwards I gripped him tightly, my arm numb under the weight of his shoulder.

  ‘Stupid bitch,’ he murmured. ‘It’s you I want. Can’t you tell?’

  That was the first night I betrayed him. I didn’t wear my diaphragm, you see. I wanted to get pregnant.

  The next morning, in the Sunday paper, there was an item in the arts column. A photo, too. It just featured Lila. There was no sign of me; they must have chopped me off.

  Use Me, a play by former antiques dealer Trevor Parsons, had an unexpected visitor on Friday night. It was the film star Lila Dune, currently in London shooting the Carvalle-Reichman comedy Sexbusters. Miss Dune was visibly moved by the play, which is showing to packed houses amidst rumours of a West End transfer. ‘He is one hell of a powerful writer,’ she said. ‘A new Pinter. Use Me is the most interesting new play I’ve seen in London.’

  I lowered the paper. I stared across at Trev, sitting unshaven in my dressing gown.

  ‘How could you? She never said all those things! You just used her. And what’s all that crap about a West End transfer?’

  He smiled smugly. ‘She won’t mind. She’ll be flattered.’

  ‘She hasn’t even seen another play.’

  He gestured, vaguely, with his knife. ‘Sounds quite intellectual, doesn’t she?’

  ‘Christ, you’re an ambitious bastard.’ Breathing heavily, I glared at him across the littered breakfast table. ‘You’d sell your own grandmother for ten bob.’

  He smirked at me. ‘It’s decimal coinage now.’

  ‘What’s she going to think, me taking her to a play just so we can prise a quote out of her? She’ll never speak to me again.’

  ‘She’ll like it. You see.’ He leant over, stole my piece of toast and popped it into his mouth. I flinched; I hated him doing that. Munching, he said, ‘You don’t know her as well as you think.’

  And he was right. On Monday, when I saw Lila, she mentioned the newspaper item.

  ‘Irma showed it to me,’ said Lila. ‘Did I sound OK?’

  Eight

  THE UNIT WAS working at high speed – Sexbusters was behind schedule and had to wrap on the Friday. By now Rex and Lila were hardly on speaking terms. The atmosphere was so bad that the crew – like most film crews, not a curious bunch – had detached themselves and worked on automatic pilot, counting the days until it would all be over. Despite the activity, an ominous air hung over the studio; another, subtler script was playing alongside the one currently in action on the sound stage.

  Lila seemed distracted, and had lost her concentration. Rumour had it that she was cracking up, as she had cracked up in the past. The question was: would they get the movie finished before it happened? Filming on location, the outside world is only too distracting. In the studio, on the other hand, you are so closed off that normal life ceases to exist; it is stilled until you rejoin it. Whatever you are feeling, it can grow out of proportion, like a monstrous plant in a greenhouse.

  In this sealed space, vast as a hangar, I felt claustrophobic and itchy. Effie was too frantic to talk. Nobby, my only other confidant, was feeling lousy; he had some recurring stomach bug from filming in Africa. Already people were absent, for one
leaves in spirit days before the actual departure. Some of the crew were going on holiday, some on to another film. One of the sound men, who had worked with Fassbinder and who had a death wish, was going to race his motor bike on the Isle of Man.

  I went outside for some air. The studio was in an industrial park in Wembley. Across the road, a fork-lift truck was loading washbasins into a lorry. From one of the buildings came the sound of a tannoy, calling somebody I would never know. Clouds scudded across the sky, swiftly, as if somebody was reeling a backcloth. In the car park loomed Lila’s motorhome. It had black tinted windows and a TV aerial. As I stood there Irma came out of its door, carrying a lunch tray. She wore a fitted suit, as always, and sensible shoes like a hospital administrator. She looked severe – in fact, fierce. She looked like Lotte Lenya in that James Bond film; when Bond approached, two knife blades sprang from the toes of her brogues.

  When she had gone, I looked at the motorhome. It was large, ribbed and creamy; it dwarfed the cars. With its black windows it looked sealed and mysterious. Lila was in there, unassailable. It was Thursday. Soon she would be gone, back to America, back to the blurred and glamorous life that I could only imagine as a sequence of magazine stills – Miss Dune leaving a night dub; Miss Dune sharing a joke with Michael Douglas. It was like the circus leaving town. All that is left is an empty field, tyre tracks in the mud and everyone suddenly looking drab.

  Was this how I felt? Not quite. I don’t think I was that obsessed with her, yet. I envied her, of course, though I could see that her fame was a kind of imprisonment. I felt superior to her, because I was more intelligent. I felt resentful that for seventeen years I had worked hard at my craft, only to end up as a piece of scenery, whilst she effortlessly earned tens of thousands of dollars being an inferior actress to myself. I felt attracted to her because she was beautiful, and in her vicinity I too had a spurious glamour. I felt drawn to her because she resembled myself, but re-dreamed: she was myself in the bathroom mirror, when I was younger and narrowed my eyes until my reflection blurred; when I pretended. She was the me I longed to see. She was a reminder of the treacherous inequality of life, and luck, and fate. One tiny rearrangement of features can make a beauty; one extra chromosome can make a killer.

  I liked her. I know that. I hadn’t started to hate her, not yet.

  Friday was the last day. It’s easier to tell you about that part.

  ‘I’ve got blasted cystitis again,’ said Effie. She had put glitter on her cheeks.

  ‘Is this real champagne?’ asked Sebastian from wardrobe.

  ‘Did I ever tell you about Oliver Reed and the clothes peg?’ asked the designer’s assistant.

  ‘Yes,’ said Effie. ‘Twice.’

  ‘I went to a party in LA,’ said Tony Chandler. ‘Swifty Lazar gave it, and nobody drank at all. Just club sodas. Dead boring of them. Dead Californian.’

  It was Friday night. The wrap party was being held at the Retro Grade Club. This was a converted VD clinic near Leicester Square; three floors of thudding music.

  ‘It’s not champagne,’ said Effie.

  There was a silence. The crew and cast had spent three months working together, but now we were standing there with nothing to do except talk we couldn’t think of anything to say. Like awkward people everywhere, we looked as if we were wearing borrowed clothes.

  I had put up my hair. Drink in hand, I listened to Connie (make-up) tell two of the sparkies a slanderous story I had already heard about Michael Winner. I glimpsed Rex talking to three men (one short, one bald, one both) who I now knew were the producers. Lorraine was there, wearing a dress that was seemingly made of kitchen foil. The unit typist started dancing all by herself. People shuffled their feet and fell silent. It was like demob day in the army; seeing each other in their civilian clothes, everyone felt suddenly shy. Somebody even asked me, ‘What are your plans for Christmas?’ – the sort of thing one asks, in desperation, one’s hairdresser.

  I felt stupidly bereft. Maybe Lila wasn’t going to come. Big stars seldom come to wrap parties. They have either long ago left for some other project or else don’t fancy drinking lukewarm Asti Spumante and making small talk to members of the crew whose names they never knew anyway. Half an hour passed. She wasn’t going to come, and I would never see her again.

  In fact, I was just about to leave when she made her entrance.

  Everyone stopped talking. This was not just because she looked stunning – her hair was piled on top of her head and she wore a red satin sheath dress that revealed her shoulders. It was the way she walked, with the steadiness of the unsteady.

  I stopped and watched. Rex was dancing with Lorraine, whose Bacofoil was unwrapping at the back. Lila went up to the producers, smiled sweetly as they kissed her, and chatted with them for a moment. Then she turned, and took a bucket of ice from a passing waiter. She removed the champagne bottle and put it on the floor. Then she took the bucket over to the dancers, walked up to Rex, turned the bucket upside down and poured the contents over his head.

  The ice cubes bounced on to the floor. There was a surprising amount of water at the bottom. Rex cowed, staggering; he was drenched. Lorraine squealed. The crowd moved back.

  ‘You low-life cocksucker,’ said Lila, and walked carefully away, in the direction of the bar.

  People moved apart for her. Somebody giggled; Rex had not been a popular director. Joshua Broome clapped Lila’s performance but she didn’t seem to notice. She was very drunk; or maybe it was drugs. Everybody else seemed too embarrassed, or surprised, to do anything at all.

  I went up to the bar and stood beside Lila.

  ‘You can do better than that,’ I said.

  ‘Huh?’ Lila turned. She looked flushed and hectic; her lipstick was smudged. ‘What’dya say?’

  ‘I said, you can do better than that. Give me five minutes.’

  Lorraine had disappeared. Pretending I wanted to phone her up about something, I got her number from the make-up assistant, who had been her best friend on the set. Then I asked the dub manager for a piece of card and some Sellotape and rejoined Lila at the bar. ‘Follow me,’ I said.

  She came, obediently. We pushed open the back door and found ourselves in an alleyway. It was chilly. I took out the card. On its blank side I wrote, with Pentel: Play out your fantasies with Young Actress, Lorraine. Tel: 388 7991.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ asked Lila. The drink had made her slow-witted.

  ‘Just follow me.’

  I led her to the end of the alley. A phone booth stood there. It was plastered with cards. Busty Lynn’s Massage, Madame Vanessa, Leather Equipment for Sale, I’m Susi! Young Model. They all had phone numbers.

  I realised, with surprise, that I was holding Lila’s wrist. I stroked the skin, just for a moment. ‘Watch this.’

  I broke off a piece of Sellotape with my teeth and stuck up Lorraine’s card. We stood back and looked at it; Lila staggered, and steadied herself against me.

  ‘You going to leave it there?’ she asked at last. It had taken her a while to understand what I was doing.

  ‘Sure.’

  Lila’s eyes widened, then she laughed.

  I smiled. We stood there for a moment. A police siren wailed. Beyond the alley, in the lit street, people passed to and fro, out for a good time. They looked suddenly innocent. Neon signs glared: Wendyburgers, TICKETS ALL SHOWS. Lights chased around a sign for Minicabs Day and Nite.

  A breeze rustled some rubbish, heaped in a doorway. I realised that a man lay sleeping there.

  Lila hiccupped, then shivered. ‘I sure as hell wouldn’t like you for an enemy.’

  I just grinned.

  The next day Lila and Irma flew back to America, and I presumed that an episode in my life was over.

  But it wasn’t, was it? In fact, it had only just begun.

  Nine

  FILMING IS LIKE being in hospital. You are in a sealed world with its own food, its own peculiar routines starting at an unearthly hour in the morning.
It has its own cast – people you will never see again. While you are in there nobody knows what is happening to you. There are vast stretches of boredom. You come out of it into a city that seems unchanged by your absence, though the trees in your street might be more heavily in leaf. You feel bereft, that it is all over and there is nothing to show for it – it might never have happened. Life resumes its normal course and yet, though those weeks seem an illusion, a dream, you are not quite the same. You have been tinkered with; there has been a small shifting, within, but you have been sewn up again and have emerged into the outside world seemingly the same.

  I have always felt this – with stage shows too, as well as the small amount of filming I have done. In the past, though, this has been a professional sensation – I have learnt something I can work on, I have inhabited a character that has expanded me, that I can use again. I have learnt, through various directors, how to express myself in ways I didn’t know I possessed. I have been, to some extent, taken over by another person who didn’t exist until I made her flesh. Even with less happy experiences, with unsympathetic directors, I have also gained something – how to manipulate, to battle or, in extremis, how to fake in rehearsal and then rediscover my character on stage. How to pretend to everybody – even, sometimes, to myself.

  With Sexbusters, though, I had learnt nothing. This wasn’t just because I had simply stood there while they stretched a tape measure from my head to the mantelpiece and shoved a light meter in front of my nose. For the first time in my life I had dipped my toe in the big movie business and what had I found? A foolish re-make of a foolish film that never should have been made in the first place – how bankrupt can the imagination get? A feeble script and unconvincing characters. Glossy and inappropriate locations. A second-rate director who thought from his groin. The cynical use of a bankable star, and a distinguished but wrecked old stage actor, to give the whole shabby enterprise some sort of clout.