The Stand-In

by Deborah Moggach

  I should never have got involved with it. I had just done it for the money, and some sort of prurient curiosity, and I felt soiled. Gertis and the Giants seemed a long way away now, in another life.

  I felt changed, but it was nothing to do with my work. Some wound had been opened, and I didn’t want to locate it. I had stitched it up carefully so that I wouldn’t notice the difference. It’s ironic, really. I would spend weeks in workshops and rehearsals, getting under a character’s skin, exploring and analysing. But then work is easy, isn’t it? Even when it’s difficult, it’s easy.

  The day after the party a motor bike messenger rang my doorbell. He gave me a box. Inside it was a big bottle of Je Reviens perfume. With it was a note. ‘To the best “Me” around! Thanks. See ya! LILA XXX.’

  A month passed. I wasn’t pregnant yet. It was a humid September. Outside my window the lime tree sweated. Indoors I waited for the phone to ring. I wasn’t out of work, of course, I was just waiting for work. One phone call – today, next week, next year – and I must drop everything. One missed period, and my life could change.

  Meanwhile I existed in a state of suspended animation. I went to my body workouts and my French conversation classes. I read reviews of plays in which I had not been invited to take part, whose directors were becoming younger and less known to me. I noted, sourly, that an actress who had played my fellow supermarket cashier in an afternoon soap (parts for which we were both miscast) had joined the RSC and was rehearsing Imogen.

  I wore the perfume, but not for Trev. I didn’t want my skin to remind him of anybody else. When I was spending an evening alone I dabbed it on; with my wet finger I touched my pulse points.

  I felt sluggish and yet unsettled. Trev visited – he was always a visitor, it was always greetings and farewells with Trev. Sometimes I resented him when he arrived, because then I could no longer anticipate him. Each arrival was simply a countdown to his departure, every moment was one step nearer to my renewed solitude. At night, unknown to him, I urged him to make me pregnant – me, a liberated woman, was using the oldest trick in the book, wasn’t it shameful? The hope inflamed me; I was slippery with passion. ‘Blimey,’ he said afterwards, and felt over his body for broken bones. In a film we would end up marrying, and in the closing reel we would kiss and I could have him to myself for life. Kids are great, aren’t they? said Lila. She was thirty-eight too; time was running out for both of us.

  At the end of September a script arrived from my agent. It was a play about the homeless; somebody was going to stage it at a community centre in Brixton. It was a worthy piece about life’s injustice and I agreed to join the cast. My character had a speech about the haves and the have-nots, and as I read it I thought about the Daimler, and how behind its black windows anybody could re-create themselves, and how I had despised myself for play-acting.

  Rehearsals were due to start in the middle of October. I was to play a social worker – a role I had been cast in twice before, which must be a sign of something. This social worker, Marion, was a particularly mature specimen – the stage directions, florid pieces of writing, called her ‘menopausal and malcontent’. Juliet had slipped from me for ever. Now I was destined to shrivel, or to thicken, into character parts. Ahead lay a wasteland of aunts. Or, in feminist venues for an even tinier salary, lesbian careworkers of abused children. Play your cards right, as Trev might say, and in twenty years I could end up as Lady Bracknell. In Slough.

  On Tuesday, the week before rehearsals, I was just going to the launderette when the phone rang. I rushed back, up the stairs.

  ‘Darling,’ said Maggie, ‘listen to this.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘I think we made a bit of an impression last summer.’ She paused. I heard the click of her lighter. It must be something interesting, for her to light a cigarette. ‘I’ve just had the casting director of Maizin Productions on the line. It seems that our friend Lila Dune has asked for you personally, to stand in for her on her next picture.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘There’s been a bit of an argy-bargy with the unions, of course, but there it goes.’

  ‘There what goes?’

  ‘She’s the star.’

  I paused. ‘She wants me?’

  ‘It’s a picture called Bump In The Night. They start shooting next week.’

  ‘Next week?’

  ‘In New York.’

  ‘New York?’

  ‘You going to go on repeating everything I say?’

  I walked to the launderette on weightless legs. My skin felt stretched. I sat down next to an old lady who had fallen asleep and I watched my clothes curve and fall, curve and fall. I saw them through the window of the dryer but they no longer belonged to me.

  I felt nauseous. It wasn’t exactly unpleasant. It was more like that turbulence when some longed-for boyfriend has just phoned, and afterwards you settle down to recall, in luxurious detail, every word he said.

  She wanted me. More than that, she had made a fuss to get me.

  The dryer stopped. The woman next to me woke and said, ‘Shame about his birthmark, isn’t it.’ Then she coughed into a handkerchief and went back to sleep.

  I pulled out my clothes and started to fold them. My face felt hot, as if I had just been summoned by royalty. What was I going to wear?

  I knew, of course, that I should refuse.

  Trev, who was like a child when it came to gadgets, had got a new answerphone. It had a ten-number memory, with a little window for the names. I sat in his armchair and pretended not to read it. Number i was his agent, Dominic. Number 2 was Max, his best mate, who ran Look Back in Ongar. Number 3 was myself. I sighed. I least I was earlier than his parents; they were 7 and he had given up after that.

  I told him about the offer. It felt like a repeat of last August’s conversation, with Trev my Mephistopheles all over again.

  ‘What about Plight?’ I said. ‘I can’t let them down.’

  ‘Two weeks playing to a bunch of old dears who thought you were their raffia class?’ He put on the kettle. ‘You ever been to New York?’

  ‘No!’ Didn’t he know anything about me? Had he never asked?

  ‘Nor have I.’ He put on the tea. He was being nice to me today, as if I had suddenly become an important visitor.

  ‘It’s not my world.’ I said. ‘It’s another dumb picture.’

  He sat down on the floor, between my legs. He had just washed his hair; I stroked his wet head. Today he felt like my labrador dog, which had been playing in a pond. I often compared him to dogs. Sheaves of typewritten paper lay all over the carpet. He was writing a novel, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was about. This made me feel flattered but uneasy, as if he were monitoring my movements. On the other hand, maybe it wasn’t about me at all. That would be worse.

  I stroked his hair and wondered, yet again, if he were a natural writer or just a second-hand dealer, who banged other people’s words together, sanded them down, polished them up and flogged them as genuine.

  I didn’t want to know the truth; I was too besotted. Nor did I dare ask if he was figuring on coming to New York.

  The next day my period started. I sat on the lavatory and thought: I seem to spend my whole life alone in bathrooms, looking at myself in the mirror.

  So I ditched the community play and decided to go to America. I lied to the theatre company, and told them my mother had died. I told them with such conviction that my own eyes moistened. When I put the phone down I felt a small charge of electricity shoot through my veins; just a buzz. Lying always energised me.

  A contract was faxed to Maggie, my agent. It was terrific money – $750 a week plus hotel accommodation. Like most actresses I was chronically badly-off; it had taken me ten years to afford a place of my own.

  Now, looking at my contract, I felt greed stirring within me like a foetus I never knew I was carrying. I told myself I would never buy those stupid leather suits in Bond Street, I wasn’t like that; I didn’t want a
limousine with a driver. All I wanted was the money to forget that money was important; I wanted to possess the insouciance of the fortunate. Lack of money is like being a cripple; every step achingly reminds you of your bad leg. It makes you petty; it stops you thinking about anything interesting.

  That’s not quite the truth, is it? That’s the old me talking, the other Jules. Remember Belle de jour, where the respectable housewife leaves her home each afternoon and works in a brothel? Catherine Deneuve. I dreamed that film again, after I saw it. In fact I dreamed it several times, with variations.

  The Thursday before my flight I went shopping. I went to a shop I had seen once, just off Marylebone High Street. It sold a wide range of exceedingly tarty dresses – red sequins, dripping silver, slippery silk . . . backless, frontless. The sort of dresses I had never imagined buying – the other me, that is, the Jules who bought material at the Liberty’s sale.

  I bought one with my Barclaycard. It was made of bronze satin, and it was slashed one side to leave a shoulder bare and the other to reveal a thigh. It was the sort of dress Lila would wear. In my stuffy, curtained booth I stood in front of the mirror and turned slowly, holding my gaze. I re-applied my lipstick. Then I took out my eye pencil and, licking the point, painted myself a beauty spot, just where she had it.

  I pouted at myself and then I gradually pulled the skirt up, a little higher. Between the curtains there was a gap. Two Arab men were standing in the shop; they could see me. I smiled at my reflection and then I peeled off the dress, oh so slowly. As I did it, I watched them in the mirror.

  I didn’t show the dress to Trev. For some reason, despite our games, it would have confused him. After all, it confused me.

  Trev was going to come with me, but at the last moment he backed off.

  ‘Listen, love,’ he said, ‘I’ve had a phone call from BBC Scotland.’

  ‘Really?’ I felt suspicious when he called me love. It was too sincere.

  ‘Straight up. This bloke, he’s interested in Use Me, but I’ve got to do more work on it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I can’t go with you.’

  I didn’t reply. I looked at him, sharply. His face was bland. What the hell was going on?

  ‘What bloke?’ I asked.

  ‘Bill Bryden.’

  I turned away, so he couldn’t see my face. I started scrubbing the draining board, vigorously. My skin felt boiled.

  ‘I’ll miss you something chronic,’ he said. ‘But it’s only two months.’

  I knew I should be delighted for him. His big break and all that. I scrubbed harder.

  ‘I’ll phone you,’ he said. He turned me around and ran his finger down my nose. ‘I’ll phone you every day.’ He lifted up my damp, red hand and kissed it. ‘I’ll miss your careworn hands. I’ll miss your funny face.’

  ‘Funny?’

  ‘Gorgeous face. I’ll miss this little bit here.’ He touched the corner of my mouth. Then he leant forward and kissed it gently. ‘I’ll miss this little bit here,’ he said, sliding his hand up my skirt.

  I didn’t trust him. I turned away to dry my hands.

  ‘Hey, why don’t I look after your place?’ he asked. ‘My heating’s packed up. I’ll water your plants.’ He grinned. ‘I’ll keep your bed warm.’

  Bitterly I thought: the only time he suggests moving into my flat is when I’m moving out. I didn’t say anything, however. I smiled sweetly and showed him the spray for my ferns and how to work my newly-repaired washing machine. Just for a moment we seemed unexpectedly domestic. It felt intimate, to show him my fusebox.

  ‘Remember, it’s my bed,’ I warned. ‘My sheets.’ I paused. ‘Just remember that.’

  He crossed his fingers. ‘Scout’s honour.’

  I looked at him sharply. ‘You’ve never been a Scout.’

  And so, on a bright morning in the middle of October, Trev drove me to the airport – he was borrowing my car too. Now I was leaving he was suddenly ardent. The Renault squealed along in third gear, he drove with one hand on the wheel and the other up my skirt. Whimpering, I cried, ‘Clutch!’ He pressed the dutch and I shifted the gear stick for him, into fourth. I rested my head on his shoulder.

  ‘You smell gorgeous,’ he said.

  ‘Just perfume.’

  ‘New.’

  I nodded. It was Lila’s.

  The motorway sign flashed past: HEATHROW AIRPORT ½ MILE. Now I was leaving England, the scruffy fields beside the road suddenly looked poignant. Three months ago I had worn a silver dress from Oxfam; it had cost £2. By chance, I had stood on a street with wishes in my head but nobody to hear them. Now I was flying to America. In my suitcase was a bronze dress that cost a hundred times more, and what were my wishes now?

  At the airport I felt ridiculously nervous. My bowels growled. Trev, self-conscious now, gave me a dry kiss on the cheek. He suddenly seemed young and bereft. I clasped him awkwardly at the entrance to the departure lounge. Then I walked quickly through the gates. When I turned round he had disappeared into the crowd.

  An hour later I was boarding the 11 o’clock British Airways flight to JFK. As I stood in the cabin, wedged between two businessmen who were stuffing their Burberrys into the luggage compartments, I smelt Lila’s perfume on my skin. I pictured her wild loopy writing: ‘To the best “Me” around!’

  NEW YORK

  One

  I WAS WAKING up, slowly, from an operation. They had cut me open and removed something vital. I lay in my bed, drowsily, my mouth dry as cotton wool. Far away I heard a clanging; somebody was banging shut a rubbish bin, again and again. Inside the bin, organs steamed like meat.

  My eyeballs smarted. Traffic was passing, way down below me. It came from the bottom of a well. I ran my fingers across the starchy sheet and spread my legs like a starfish. The mattress was too wide for a hospital bed. Something clanged again, down in the street. I had been back at primary school, banging the cymbals in the band, except I had never had a go on them, it was always Louisa something who had been given the cymbals to play, marching up and down the stage with her smug plaits swinging. I climbed out of bed; I felt swollen and heated with jet lag, as if I had flu. It was only midnight. I was in a strange hotel room with heavy beige drapes at the window. Parting them, I looked out. Opposite me, buildings rose up, high as cliffs, blocking out the orange sky. Between them I glimpsed more huge buildings, banked up; some were spotlit and seemed to be steaming in the dark, breathing out white mist.

  In the windows opposite, empty offices were lit as brightly as stage sets, waiting for something to happen. Through the double glazing, sirens from a thousand cop shows wailed down the canyons of the streets. I felt utterly alone; I felt exhilarated.

  I dressed, put on my coat and boots and went down to the lobby. I walked, most of that first night in New York City. The clanging, I discovered, came from a loose manhole cover out in the street; tinny yellow taxi-cabs rattled over it as they passed. Opposite, glowing pink neon, was Dianne’s Discount Body Waxing. The blind was pulled down. ‘Full Leg’ it said. ‘Bikini Line. Back. Priced Accordingly.’ Behind the blind, light still glowed.

  I walked up E 39th Street and across Lexington. I didn’t call it Lex, yet. Everything was new to me. The air was sharp; I breathed lungfulls of it. Smoke steamed from manholes as if Hell was down there, exhaling. Long black limousines slid past, their windows dark. A man, dressed in rags, stood next to a lamp-post. His head was tilted, listening to it. Then he argued back, his voice rising. ‘Siggy didn’t wait for me!’ He paused, waiting for a reply, and then shouted back. ‘They told me personally!’

  I walked past lurid shop windows; Camera Barn. Radio Shack. I didn’t know how far I had gone, but the shops were growing shabbier. Headless mannequins stood behind the glass, wearing dusty shirtwaisters. In doorways, sleeping shapes stirred and muttered. I could smell the river. One man, his head bandaged, came up to me with his palm outstretched. I gave him a dollar bill. He saluted. ‘See you in paradi
se,’ he said; he started tittering, and sank away into the shadows. I passed a barricaded shop window, heavy with padlocks. Chiropractor, said the sign. Come on in! Get your spine in line! Outside a warehouse a white Cadillac waited, purring, a plume of smoke rising from its exhaust.

  I went into an all-night coffee shop and sat down on a plastic chair. I couldn’t think what meal I should be feeling hungry for. A man beside me muttered at a bowl of ketchup sachets: ‘I ain’t going to no wedding in no tux.’

  The waiter brought me a plate of toast and luminous jelly. As he put it down he looked at me and frowned.

  ‘Ain’t I seen you someplace?’ he asked.

  I jumped. ‘No.’

  ‘TV show maybe?’

  I paused, then I shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

  Did he mean he recognised me from some movie, from Touch and Go, when I rose from the pool all wet and gave the teenage Trev a hard-on? Did he really think I was Lila, or was I just a nobody he had stood next to one day, queuing at the bank? I pursed my lips into Lila’s pout. At the counter, rows of grapefruit were displayed. Each was cut in half, with a moist cherry in the centre. They were lit as glamorously as film stars. And outside the streets were full of nobodies confiding in pieces of metal; vouchsafing, to lamp-posts, their private catastrophes. Each of us carries our own dramas, but where does the spotlight fall?

  I didn’t feel lonely that night, not then. I felt dislocated, and excited, and feverish with jet lag. Back in my hotel room I pulled off my boots and lay down on the bed, my legs aching and my senses alert. I flipped through the TV channels on my remote control. A blurred hand stroked something furry. ‘Niteline Escorts,’ breathed a voice. ‘When you’re all alone and don’t want to be.’ A girl lay on a bed, her legs spread. ‘This is my friend Bambi, she specialises in cocksucking.’ Phone numbers flashed on the screen. You could even use your credit card. One number for Fuck; another for Tits. ‘Six nasty girls are waiting for your calls. Live talk 24 hours a day.’ Outside the sirens wailed; indoors the TV moaned. A couple appeared, naked. Her head was flung back as she mimed ecstasy, sliding her tongue across her pearly actress’s teeth as if she were playing a harmonica. Faster and faster she gasped, to a background of airport departure lounge music. Suddenly I remembered Lorraine in her Bacofoil. Maybe strange men were still ringing her up, muttering obscenities.