The Understudy: A Novel

  “…the little bitch actually asked me to get rid of her chewing gum for her, actually put it in my hand, because she was too bloody bone idle to do it herself, like I was her bloody skivvy or something…”

  “So did you?”

  “Did I hell. Talentless little cow. Did you see her in that last film? Oh my God, that was the worst film I’ve ever seen in my life…”

  “Everything fine in here?” said Nora Harper, glass in hand, leaning a little unsteadily in the doorway.

  “Yes, thanks,” they all chirruped in unison.

  “And, guys? If you want to take a break, then go ahead. I’m sure the guests can fend for themselves for a while…” She smiled a small, uneasy smile directly at Stephen, who suddenly remembered that the Wacky TV Comedian was waiting for his drink. He hurried back out toward the party, but Nora placed her hand lightly on his arm as he passed.

  “Is that for anyone in particular?” she said, glancing at the cocktail.

  “It’s for…” And he nodded toward the drunk comedian, who at that precise moment was belching wackily into his fist and stubbing his cigarette out on the rubber floor, grinding it out with the tip of his sneaker.

  “Hey, YOU!” Nora shouted across the room like a New York cop. Fifteen people looked over, and the comedian pointed to himself sheepishly. “Yeah, you—you know what an ashtray is?” He nodded dumbly. “Know how to use one?” He nodded again. People were starting to snigger now, and he was summoning up the trademark wacky expression that could usually be relied on to get him off the hook, but Nora wasn’t finished yet. “And pick that thing up.” He glanced down at the butt on the floor. “You heard me—pick it up.” And the man had no choice but to bend over, meekly pick up the cigarette butt and drop it into his jacket pocket.

  Nora turned back to Stephen. “Tell me, what do British people see in that guy?”

  “I think people find him wacky.”

  “Yeah, so wacky you want to kick him in the eye. May I?” she asked, taking the drink from Stephen’s hand. “Care for one yourself? Here, we can share this…” and she passed him back the drink. He took a sip, and they stood for a moment in silence, as she scrutinized his face through narrowed eyes, just long enough for him to start to feel uncomfortable.

  “I should probably clear some more glasses…”

  But she stopped him, placing her hand lightly on his shoulder once more. “Something’s bugging me—haven’t we met before?” she said. “I mean somewhere other than in the bathroom?”

  “I think you might have seen me at the theater.”

  “The theater?”

  “And we spoke, very briefly, at the first-night party. I sort of work with your husband.”

  “You’re one of the stage manager guys, right?”

  “No, I’m an actor, well, an understudy at the moment. Your husband’s understudy, in fact.”

  “Want me to push him downstairs for you?” she deadpanned. “Make it look like an accident? They’re spiral stairs, the police would never know.”

  “Maybe one day.”

  “Or we could hire someone to do it—go fifty-fifty.”

  “I’ll let you know.” Once more, he felt he should get back to work.

  “So what else do you do?”

  “What else? Okay, well, you know that bit at the end, when Byron walks off to his death, and this Ghostly Figure opens the door for him? I am that Ghostly Figure.”

  “The guy in the mask!”

  “That’s me.”

  “I’m sorry, I should have recognized you!”

  “Well, I am wearing a mask, so—”

  “No, but, still, you do it so well. What’s the secret?”

  “Practice. An hour every morning. Open-close, open-close, close-open, open-close…” She laughed, a warm, throaty laugh, and Stephen felt a little glow of satisfaction, and for a moment his waiter’s uniform reverted to just being a really nice suit.

  “And my husband—how is he to work with?”

  “Well, I don’t really work with him as such, but he’s great, really, really…” There was a moment’s hesitation as he looked for a word more eloquent than “great”; “…full of energy.”

  “He’s certainly full of something. I’m sorry…what’s your name again?”

  “Stephen,” adding, almost as a test, “Stephen McQueen.”

  “Well, Stephen,” she said, passing the test, “I probably shouldn’t say this, but…don’t you mind? My husband asking you to…what I’m trying to say is, he hasn’t by any chance been a complete asshole, has he?”

  “Not at all. Well, a little maybe. But it’s okay, I’ve done this kind of thing before. I don’t mind.” And at this moment he really didn’t mind. It was, after all, the first time he’d had actual eye contact for the last three hours, the first time he’d been treated like a human being rather than a swing bin or drinks dispenser, and he was enjoying talking to this wry, elegant, slightly severe woman, leaning unsteadily against the doorway. They both surveyed the party. The Twelfth Sexiest Man in the World stood in the center of the room, wearing sunglasses, a cigarette dangling louchely from his lip, juggling satsumas, much to the delight of the Twenty-eighth and Sixty-fourth Sexiest Women in the World. Even from a purely statistical point of view, it was impressive.

  “My beloved husband,” drawled Nora, sipping her drink. “I love him very much, and he’s certainly easy on the eye, but I do sometimes feel as if I’ve somehow married this…gifted child.” She sighed, then forced a smile. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be mean about him, but we’ve just had this terrible row.”

  “Nothing too serious, I hope.”

  “No, just…a stupid argument.”

  “So you’re not enjoying the party, then?”

  “Two hundred coked-up egomaniacs, treading asparagus into the rugs and asking me who I am? I hope it never ends.”

  They both turned and looked round the party. The last of the children had been evacuated to a safe place now, joints were being rolled on glass-topped tables and, all of a sudden, a very, very long queue of people snaked along the wall to the concealed toilet door. All around the room plates piled high with tiny sausages and mushroom tartlets and skewers of rare roast lamb sat untouched, and the voices in the room had definitely become more strident and intense. “I”s and “me”s, “wow”s and “fuck”s, bounced off the high, plain walls; people were not so much talking as rubbing conversation in each other’s faces.

  “I have some, by the way. If you’re interested…” said Nora conspiratorially, her hand on his forearm.

  “What?”

  “Cocaine. I find it helps to make these things a little easier,” and she pinched her nostrils together, sniffed quietly, swallowed; the first unattractive thing she had done all evening. Stephen couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed; no wonder she was talking to him so intently. She’d probably talk to anyone.

  “Not while I’m on duty,” said Stephen, feeling that their moment had passed. “I’d better go…”

  Once again, she placed her hand on his arm. “Hey, have you seen the roof?” she said, widening her eyes. “The view’s amazing. Come on—I’ll show you.”

  “But don’t you think I ought to—”

  “Stephen, I’m sorry, you don’t seem to understand. If I hear one more showbiz anecdote, then I will start to scream, and there’s no guarantee I will ever stop.” And she slotted one arm through his, grabbed a bottle of champagne with the other, walked him out of the kitchen, and over to the glass-stepped spiral staircase that led up to the roof.

  “Quick, before they find where I’ve hidden the bongos…”

  They climbed the stairs, a little unsteadily, and just as they reached the door that opened up into the night air, a particularly full-throated, flamboyant, vibrato-rich chorus of “Happy Birthday” broke out from the room below. Nora looked over her shoulder, smiling conspiratorially at Stephen, and waved her bottle in the direction of the party below.

  “You know h
ow you can tell they’re all actors?”

  “Go on.”

  “Because every damn one of them is harmonizing.”

  Two Cigarettes at Once

  The long low flat roof of the old umbrella factory had been turned into some sort of minimalist urban garden, expensively decked and sparsely planted, and lit with strings of all-weather bulbs that transformed the fine drizzle into a special effect. Stephen turned the collar up on his suit jacket, and folded his arms tight across his chest. He’d never been on a transatlantic ocean liner, just the Isle of Wight ferry, but he had a vague notion that this was what it might feel like to stand at the railings and contemplate the wake behind you. What was that corny old film with Bette Davis, set on the ocean liner? Where someone—Paul Henreid, is it, or Fredric March?—lights the two cigarettes he holds in his mouth, and passes one to Bette Davis. He had cigarettes in his pocket, he could try that if he wanted to. Feeling woozy and reckless, he decided to give it a go.

  “What in God’s name are you doing?” said Nora.

  “Sorry?”

  “You smoke them two at a time?”

  “One’s for you,” and he took one from his mouth, and offered it to her. Nora stared at it. “Sorry, did you not…?”

  “Thank you. Very suave. If a tad unhygienic.” She placed the cigarette in her mouth, a little gingerly, he thought. “Josh keeps on at me to give up. Says it’ll make me look old, an idea which clearly appalls him. I had been trying those nicotine patches, but I had to wear so many of the things that naked I looked like a quilt.”

  The word “naked” hung in the night air for a moment. He tried to concentrate on the view. The sodium lights of the King’s Cross redevelopment glowed in the distance, and, once again, the occasion seemed to demand a certain mode of behavior, and conversation—wry and witty, world-weary and elegant; David Niven, perhaps.

  “So—what did you get Josh for his birthday?” he asked, more prosaically than he’d intended.

  “Oh—a new iPod.” She sighed. “Original, huh? I’ve been trying to resist, but he wore me down. So I got him a new iPod and told him to just shut the fuck up about it. It was either that or a goddamn samurai sword.”

  “Still, what d’you get the man who’s got everything?”

  “Well, everything Star Wars–related, anyway.”

  He laughed and glanced sideways at her. Her face, beneath the glossy black fringe, was round and pale, split with a large red mouth, placed, somewhat lopsidedly, under a small, neat nose, slightly pink now in the autumn air. Her teeth were large, not quite as white and regular as he expected for an American, and there was a small chip in the enamel on one of the front teeth, a smudge of lipstick on the other; something about her makeup made Stephen think of a child sitting at her mother’s dressing table. Her skin was pale, with a slight, not-unpleasant oily sheen around what he believed was called the T-zone, and small amounts of makeup could be seen clumping in the lines of her eyes, which were green, dark and heavy-lidded, and quite beautiful. Although at present she was fairly drunk, or drugged, or both, her natural expression seemed to be a kind of pouty amusement, a slightly stern, sleepy look, as if she had woken a little sulky from an afternoon nap. She leaned lazily on the ocean liner railing, brushing her short fringe across her forehead with her fingertips, drawing occasionally on her cigarette, and once again Stephen thought of an old film, something starring Carole Lombard or the young Shirley MacLaine, maybe, an effect heightened by the dress she wore, black, plain, old-fashioned, a little too small for her slightly—what was Josh’s word?—lush body, shiny with wear on the shoulders and bottom. He found himself wondering what it would be like to put his hand in the warm curve at the small of her back, lean over and kiss her, when she turned suddenly to look at him, eyebrows raised questioningly.

  For something to say, he blurted out: “Amazing apartment!” In the spirit of transatlantic communication he’d attempted the word “apartment,” and almost gotten away with it.

  “You really think so?” She frowned, instantly making Stephen question if he did really think so. “I hate it. It’s like this men’s magazine bachelor pad. Every morning I wake up and feel like asking if there’s a toothbrush I can borrow, and then I remember I actually live here. I mean, what’s wrong with having rooms, for chrissake? Josh likes to say that he put the funk into ‘functional.’ Personally I think he just put the ass into ‘embarrassing,’ but, hey, what do I know?”

  Stephen laughed. “So why did you buy it?”

  “Oh, I didn’t, Josh did, just before we got married. Technically, I’m just the lodger. Most of my stuff’s still in storage in the States. It’s not exactly to my taste, but you know what they say: a house is not a home without a skateboard ramp.”

  “You should see mine. What a dump…”

  “You live alone?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Single?”

  “Recently divorced.”

  “A little young to be divorced, aren’t you?”

  “I’m precocious.”

  Nora laughed, and Stephen felt a quick jab of delight watching her laugh, then there was another pause, as she drew hard on her cigarette.

  “So why did you get divorced?”

  “Ah…”

  “If it’s not a personal question.”

  “Well, let me see…”

  “Let me guess—she beat you up?”

  “No. Well, not physically.”

  Nora winced. “Hey, you’re not going to hurl yourself off the roof, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Because I’d hate to be responsible for the death of a guest. Well, certain guests, anyway…”

  “Except I’m not a guest.”

  “Even so. It’s none of my business. I apologize. Change subject…okay, tell me, why the hell do you do this ridiculous job?”

  “You mean acting or catering?”

  “Well, catering isn’t a ridiculous job, so…”

  “You say what you think, don’t you?”

  “Stephen, between you and me, I’ve possibly had a little too much to drink.”

  “Well, I do it because I love it. Even if it is ridiculous. When I’m actually doing it, I love it. The bits in between aren’t great.”

  “So why do it, then?” she asked—a little more harshly than necessary, he thought. It was a conversation he’d had innumerable times, usually with concerned elderly relatives at Christmas, and he never enjoyed it.

  “Don’t know—overactive imagination? Watched too many movies growing up, I suppose.”

  “A lot of people watched the moon landings too, but they didn’t all try and become astronauts.”

  “No, but you know how it is—you do a couple of plays at school…”

  “You went to the theater a lot?”

  “Not really. I was in plays, but I didn’t really go to the theater at all, only panto. The Isle of Wight doesn’t really have a West End. Well, it does, but it’s called Ventnor.” Nora looked blank. “So I liked acting in plays, but I always preferred watching movies.”

  “Me too! You know, I’m probably not meant to say this—Josh thinks it’s some kind of blasphemy or something—but I can’t stand going to the the-ater. Every time Josh hobbles out on that stage on his orthopedic shoe and starts talking in that weird, crazy, warbly voice he puts on, I just want to burst out laughing. I just want to shout out, ‘Talk properly!’ Don’t you agree?”

  “No comment.” Stephen smiled, and looked back out at the view.

  “So which do you prefer, acting in theater or movies?”

  “Difficult to say.” He could, of course, come out with the party line about preferring the immediate response of a theater audience, but his main screen experience came from playing the title role in Sammy the Squirrel Sings Nursery Rhymes, and he suspected that this fell outside of what is generally meant by “movies.” He decided to change the subject. “How about you? What do you do?”

  “What do I do? Well, that’s a very go
od question. When I met Josh, I was a waitress in this bar in Brooklyn.”

  “Is that where you’re from?”

  “Brooklyn? Yeah, well, no, no, New Jersey. My family’s from Jersey, which is near New York but not, if you know what I mean. Anyway, that’s how we met, in a bar. A humble waitress brings Josh Harper his club sandwich, and the rest is showbiz history. All of this”—she swept her arm across the view—“is like the world’s greatest tip.” She took a long swig from the bottle of champagne she held by her side, holding it by the neck, as if it were a beer bottle, then passed it to Stephen, adding, almost as an afterthought, “Oh, and I once had a hit single too. Way back in the mists of time.”

  “Really?”

  “Uh-huh. Well, I say ‘hit.’ Number a hundred and two in the Billboard chart in 1996.”

  “That’s fantastic.”

  “Well, not fantastic,” she insisted, though Stephen was being entirely sincere. Nora was the kind of woman who particularly suited a low-slung bass. “What did you sound like?”

  “Oh, you know, the usual—jangly, sub–Joni Mitchell college-radio stuff. Music to Comfort-Eat By. We were called Nora Schulz and the New Barbarians, if you can believe that. I was being cloned by the record company as the new Alanis Morissette. I was like Alanis Morissette’s stunt double. If she ever fell backward off her stool, the record company was going to parachute me in to take her place. God knows why—I don’t even particularly like Alanis Morissette. Ironic, don’t you think?”

  “Nora Schulz and the New Barbarians. Great name.”

  “Trips off the tongue, doesn’t it? I can’t think why we weren’t bigger. Of course, the record company wanted me to change it to something more WASPy, ideally Malanis Florissette, something like that. They thought we’d sell more that way, but I stuck to my artistic principles, and I stayed Nora Schulz, and, well, the rest is rock-and-roll history. Number a hundred and two with a bullet.”

  “And what was the song called?”

  “You mean you don’t remember?”