The Stand-In

  I had made up my face with care; I had some pride left. When I looked in my compact, however, there were beads of perspiration on my nose. The round, powdery mirror jogged in my hand. Like a camera close-up, it presented me with my own fractured self – eyes, lips. It gave me the most attention I would get all day. I wore jeans, Reeboks and a pink knitted t-shirt I had bought in Bloomies – carefully casual, don’t-give-a-fuck clothes. But nobody noticed what a stand-in wore, anyway. I had prepared myself for this moment. In London I had re-streaked my mousy hair; it was nearly as blonde as Lila’s. Despite my preparations, however, I suddenly felt flustered. Soon I was going to see them; soon I would be giving the most painful performance of my life.

  We drove for miles. The radio burbled on about the traffic build-up: ‘. . . a non-injury accident at Cienega and Sunset . . . this news brought to you by Gourmet Pride . . .’ Sitting in the back of the car, I looked at the driver’s slender neck and sticking-out ears.

  ‘Lila’s a bit old, isn’t she,’ I asked, ‘to be playing Jane Eyre?’

  He shrugged. In his earlobe, a diamond caught the sun. ‘She’s the element,’ he replied.

  Spoken like an executive! Everyone in LA, I was to discover, spoke like an executive. ‘Element’ meant the selling point, the big name – a big director, a big star. You needed one, to raise the money for a picture. Or two smaller stars who were like half-an-element each.

  Lila was a big element, at the moment. Her career had had its ups and downs. There had been a low point in the mid-eighties, when bimbo roles were going to younger actresses, but her career had revived. Her last three films had done terrific business; the Sexbusters try-outs had been successful, it was being released in the spring, and Lila Dune was becoming a hot property. See – I could sound like an executive, too.

  If I weren’t so nervous, I would be giggling. In this re-make of Jane Eyre, tailored especially for Lila, Mr Rochester was a reclusive multimillionaire and Jane Eyre was his ward’s shrink. Lila a shrink!

  Wasn’t that mad? But no madder than anything else. I felt car-sick; I clicked my compact shut and closed my eyes. New York was a deranged city, but this place was far worse. Despite its sunny, bland exterior the whole place was insane. We were in movieland now. I had been drawn here, helplessly, like a planet drawn into the magnetic field of the stars. Did you know that attendance at the Philadelphia Museum of Art has soared? But nobody goes in, they just run up and down the steps, because that’s what Sylvester Stallone did in Rocky.

  If we were in the movies, I’d have screwdrivers for hands. I could drill a hole through Trev’s heart. Watch the film! Watch the blood spurting!

  Three

  THE SHOOT WAS somewhere out beyond Bel Air, in a gated estate full of mansions. Some were colonnaded; some were turreted like French chateaux. In the sunshine they looked as false as movie-sets themselves, each one the back-lot of someone’s demented imagination. The streets were wide and deserted, but real people must be living behind those gates, behind those rows of cypress trees that made mausoleums of the homes. I glimpsed garages filled with four fat cars. I couldn’t believe there could be so many people in the world with so much money. It must have been garbage day; outside each gate were eight or nine bumper plastic sacks; I counted them as we passed. The appetite of it all! I thought of Lila; she lay spreadeagled like a map of America; she opened her red lips and sucked it all in: praise, attention, pop-corn, Fudge-Covered Oreos, sex-sex-sex. She munched it all, wetly, pausing only briefly to spit out a pip: me.

  Mr Rochester’s house was straight from the Yorkshire Moors – well, the Hollywood equivalent. It was weirdly appropriate, a rough-stone, Gothic pile. It was apparently owned by the Vice-President of Sanyo USA. Outside it, the street was lined with trucks, trailers and the usual film-crew collection of Merc convertibles, Golf convertibles and Cherokee jeeps.

  ‘Advancing on to the lawn, I looked up and surveyed the front of the mansion,’ said Jane. ‘It was three stories high, of proportions not vast, though considerable: a gentleman’s manorhouse, not a nobleman’s seat. Its grey front stood out well from the background of a rookery, whose cawing tenants were now on the wing . . .’

  There were plenty of cawing tenants today. People were milling around, yelling greetings to each other. I spotted Irma, her hair cropped Führer-short, scuttling along with some files under her arm. Riggers were busy setting up the shot – an exterior scene at the gates. I couldn’t see any sign of Lila or Trev.

  Before going on stage I’ve always done my breathing exercises. It calms and clears me. Ten deep breaths, ten indrawn draughts of oxygen. You feel it hissing down to your fingertips, your toes.

  I had prepared myself in the car. I had closed my eyes and filled my lungs. Today I needed every ounce of discipline. Cool, calm and detached, I wandered over to the catering trailer. Ostensibly I was inspecting the goods on offer, but out of the corner of my eye I clocked everybody. My heart was hammering. A girl stood beside me. She was vacuously pretty – I guessed, correctly, that she was an assistant in make-up. I gestured at the table. It was laden with muesli, croissants, fresh fruit, and six electric blenders.

  ‘You’re so generous here,’ I cooed, heaping some melon cubes into a blender and whizzing myself a drink. ‘In England you’d be lucky to get a chip butty.’

  She adored my accent. She said, ‘My sister’s dating Tracy Ullman’s driver. Isn’t she fabulously talented? You seen her TV show?’

  I shook my head and took a sip of the frothy drink. ‘Seen any of the cast yet?’ I asked casualy.

  She shook her head. ‘Sonny’s been making-up Lila, and there’s nobody else here yet.’

  ‘I hear that she plays a shrink,’ I said. I knew the script by heart, of course. The production office had sent me a copy two weeks earlier. But I wanted to hear anything I could.

  ‘The little girl’s been screwed up,’ she said. ‘Adèle. See, her guardian, that’s Mr Rochester, he gives her everything in the world but time. Like a lot of Daddies. Like my Daddy, you know. He didn’t give me, like, quality time.’

  I smiled. ‘Mr Rochester’s words, exactly.’ I wiped froth from my upper lip. ‘Ever read the book-of-the-movie?’

  ‘Also, like, he’s a billionaire. He’s real rich. And he’s shit-scared of somebody kidnapping his little girl. So he’s overprotective. That’s what Bikky told me, in wardrobe. She knows the screenwriter.’

  I froze. ‘Which one? The English one?’

  She shook her head. ‘He’s just come to do a polish. Like, on account of being English, I guess, and boffing the star.’

  I turned away, and pretended to inspect a long trailer with a row of doors and steps. There’s a joke you hear on film sets – Ever heard of the Polish actress who fucks the scriptwriter?

  Maybe he was here, in her trailer. I had spotted Irma going into it – a big, beige star waggon; a socking great thing with black windows, parked down the road.

  I stood for a moment, lost amongst men in shorts who wandered around with their jabbering walkie-talkies. I thought about Charlotte Brontë turning in her grave, and my own heaving emotions. I wondered how the hell I was going to get through this.

  Then a girl from the production office came up and introduced herself. She was called Chelsea, like somebody in an airport novel. Like everybody else she looked unnervingly young, suntanned and healthy, with strong white teeth. She addressed me coolly. I suspected that they resented me being flown over, on Lila’s whim, to work on the movie. Stars were so damn demanding and difficult. I knew I had to charm her – to charm them all.

  ‘Fabulous script,’ I murmured. ‘Inspired casting.’

  She led me over to the First AD, a muscular preoccupied man called Mort. She introduced me to the various members of the camera crew who weren’t otherwise occupied. They were lining up the first shot, at the gates of Mr Rochester’s house. It was Jane Eyre’s arrival for her first appointment with Adèle. She was to have a conversation over the intercom before
the gates swung open to reveal a guard and a couple of Alsatian dogs.

  I hung around, waiting for Lila, while a track was laid along the street. There was the sound of hammering. Most of the crew already knew each other, from working on other movies, but there was still a first-day-at-school atmosphere. It was hot by now, and I was sweating. Through the open gates I could see the dog-handler brushing one of the Alsatians. Two Mexican extras, who were playing gardeners, sat on the lawn, smoking.

  Just then, I heard a familiar laugh. I didn’t turn round straight away. I gazed at the plaque on the gate, counting the holes in the brass speaking panel of the intercom. Her voice grew nearer. Still I didn’t turn round. I studied the notice, nailed to the gate: ARMED RESPONSE. You saw this on a lot of gates in LA.

  I turned, smiling. Lila was walking towards me. I swung round, raised the machine gun to my shoulder and riddled her with bullets; her flesh exploded. I didn’t look at her. She was with a man. He was bearded, and wore a loose shirt, baggy trousers and espadrilles. An Indian scarf was knotted around his neck; I guessed he was the director, Hutt Sanbourn.

  She threw her arms around me and kissed me on the cheek. I smelt her perfume. ‘Jules sweetheart, it’s great to see you! How’re ya doing? Why didn’t you return my calls?’

  ‘I had to go back to England,’ I replied.

  She looked quite different. For a start, she was dressed for the part of Jane Eyre, Psychiatrist. She wore a severe grey suit, with a white blouse and high heels. Quite governessy, actually. Her hair was pulled back in a sleek chignon. But it was more than that. She had lost weight. Her features looked somehow larger and clearer; the beautiful bone structure of her face was revealed. She looked calmer. Happier. My insides folded over in despair.

  Swivelling around, she said; ‘Notice anything?’ She gave me a radiant smile. ‘So long, impulse eating. So long, frigging Fritos. I’ve lost twenty frigging pounds!’

  I looked at her tanned, glowing face. She didn’t notice that I had lost weight too, for the opposite reason. I looked at her wide mouth. Trev had kissed it now. Not mine – hers. Curdled with fascination, I imagined his face sliding down the body I had glimpsed in Saks. I pictured him drooling and nuzzling her groin. In the States they call it snacking on the carpet.

  ‘How’d you like it?’ She was asking me something.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  She was asking me if I liked my hotel. By this time Hutt, the director, had his arm around her and was including me in his first-day bonhomie. People were always nice to me when I was with Lila. I was her appendage, her creature. Her gofer (‘go-fer-this, go-fer-that’). I was simply included in his encouraging grin.

  ‘We need you over here, Miss Dune,’ he said to her. ‘We’ve moved your mark. You get out of your car, over there, and then come over to the gate here and speak into the machine.’

  I was speaking to her.

  ‘Huh?’ She asked.

  I cleared my throat. ‘Is Trev here?’

  She shook her head. ‘He’s gone to the horse races with his dealer.’ She laughed. ‘He’s the only guy left in LA who still does drugs. He’s just crazy!’ She glowed indulgently. ‘He’s already totalled his car.’

  I didn’t see Trev that day, nor the next. It seemed insane, for him to do a polish on a film script. Surely no company would hire somebody with a track record of one play in a pub theatre? Not unless, as Lila would put it, they were total dorks. He was – obviously like me – simply here because she had swung it. He was simply her toyboy.

  The first couple of days, there wasn’t much time to speak to Lila. We were shooting exteriors in the grounds of Mr Rochester’s mansion. There was a scene between Jane and Adèle, where the little girl was hostile and withdrawn, refusing to speak to her. ‘You’re like all the rest,’ she told Jane. ‘You’ll go away, just like the others.’ There was another scene between Mr Rochester and Jane. They were strolling through his garden – first a crane shot, then a two-shot and close-ups. Though they were talking about Adéle’s progress in therapy, their own powerful attraction to each other was emerging from the sub-text.

  I watched carefully. Lila, of course, was totally miscast as Jane. Joan Fontaine was, too. They were both too beautiful. It should have been me playing Jane. Me, the perennial outsider, plainly and neatly dressed ‘for I had no article of attire that was not made with extreme simplicity.’ Me who, in the book-of-the-movie, tried to please as much as her want of beauty would permit. ‘I sometimes regretted that I was not handsomer; I sometimes wished to have rosy cheeks, a straight nose, and small cherry mouth.’ Or, to be accurate; a snub, kittenish nose and wide, luscious lips.

  But this was a modern Jane Eyre, a career woman. She had not married because she had devoted herself to her profession, furthering her career in a tough, competitive, male-orientated world. A hundred years ago they were called spinsters; now they were called singles. Instead of teaching Adèle school lessons she taught her self-awareness; instead of the three Rs it was the one, big I. Me-me-me. The script revealed, in fact, that it was Mr Rochester who was most in need of therapy. He was a billionaire who had not only barricaded his house but his own feelings. His first wife, a heroin addict, was locked away upstairs, but when she finally overdosed, burned the house down and blinded Mr Rochester, he was emotionally liberated and got it together with Jane.

  Insane, wasn’t it? But no more insane than anything else. No more insane than a movie about a man with screwdrivers for hands. When we broke for lunch the next day I sat on the Thornfield lawn. Even the grass in California felt unreal; it was spongy, thatched and plasticky, like a hair transplant. I leafed through Hollywood Reporter. It had an item about some TV game show that was being developed; it was called Divorce. ‘Separated couples will compete for custody of their children. Says the producer: “We’re aiming for a family show, with laughter and tears.”’

  Lila was eating with the director, Hutt. During the afternoon, when she wasn’t on the set, she was busy with wardrobe, publicity and a long rehearsal with the child who played Adèle. I didn’t have a chance to talk to her.

  I dreaded talking to her, of course. Whatever she said would be too painful to bear. Whether she told me this was just a brief fling or the love of her life I would be equally devastated. But I was as magnetised as a mongoose, edging around a cobra: I kept making little sallies, though I knew that each bite would be poisonous.

  The last shot that afternoon was beside the pool. While Adèle splashed in the water, Mr Rochester mixed Jane a tequila and told her how Adèle was the daughter of an old girlfriend of his, a Broadway dancer who had abandoned her child and run away with a rock drummer. The set-up took some time. I sat at the poolside table with Mr Rochester’s stand-in, a pleasant, middle-aged actor called Ivan. He said he was an ex-alcoholic. We chatted aimlessly for a while, as the camera crew busied themselves around us. It was still humid, though the sun was sinking. I scratched a mosquito bite on my ankle. Ivan told me that he had an apartment in Venice and worked out on Muscle Beach. I steered the conversation around to the subject of Lila.

  ‘She looks terrific, doesn’t she,’ I said, ‘now she’s lost weight.’

  ‘She’s making it with some English guy,’ he said. ‘They’re crazy about each other. This guy I live with, he valet-parks at Spago’s and he saw them there last night. He said they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.’

  I replied politely, ‘Really?’

  ‘They got into her car and started necking like teenagers.’

  I paused. ‘Tiny bit undignified at her age, isn’t it?’

  ‘Seen her car?’ he said. ‘It’s full of traffic violations.’

  I laughed, lightly. I watched a beetle that was making its way across the flagstones. I waited until it nearly reached the grass, then I moved my foot and squashed it.

  Lila didn’t avoid me. She just looked radiant, preoccupied and busy. In short, too happy to notice my existence. It was obvious that she had no idea of any c
onnection, beyond casual friendship, between Trev and myself. She was lousy at dissembling; she was one of the most ingenuous people I had ever met. Besides, I had studied her for so long that I could read every expression on her face.

  She was, quite simply, transformed. She had no need of me any more, she was emotionally too absorbed. I watched her joking with Mr Rochester as they replaced us, sitting in our chairs beside the pool. She laughed as a mike was dropped down her blouse. Make-up – the vacuously pretty girl – dusted her face with a brush; Hair – a coffee-coloured guy with a pigtail – pulled back a loose strand of her chignon and pinned it up. She wore loose slacks, a matching blouse and a wide belt that emphasised her slender waist. She scratched her ankle. Maybe my mosquito had bitten her, maybe it gorged on our mixed blood. Perhaps she would fall ill with a blood infection and die.

  The warning bell sounded. ‘Quiet please! Background action . . .’ Adèle slipped into the pool and threw a ball around in the water. A gardener pushed a wheelbarrow across the lawn. Up in the house, a maid closed a window.

  ‘and . . . action!’

  The scene began. Jane and Mr Rochester started talking. This time Lila had learnt her lines without my help. I watched as they cut, shot another take, cut, shot another. At each take the maid reappeared at the window, like a cuckoo in a clock. Standing there under the eucalyptus tree, I watched the shadows lengthening and felt desolate with fury and frustration.

  What was I doing in this travesty of a book that I had loved? When I was a young girl, it had expressed all my secret dreams and yearnings. My father had taught Jane Eyre; the first copy I had read was his thumbed and annotated Everyman Classic. The margins were filled with pencilled speculations: Why? See page 240. His own wonderings were mingled with my awakening hopes.

  Now Mr Rochester was drinking tequilas and smoking Pall Malls. In a cunning stroke of product placement, Adèle’s Pepsi can was prominently displayed on the diving board. Jane Eyre arrived in a Chevrolet and talked about infantile rejection.