The Stand-In

  Back in my apartment I phoned Roly. Apparently the producers of The Best People had already called him; they were favourably impressed. Ironic, wasn’t it? The one time I hadn’t been trying at all. There was a moral there somewhere.

  ‘What’s happened to Lila?’ I asked.

  ‘They’ve taken her downtown to Foley Square. To be arraigned.’

  ‘I was thinking,’ I said. ‘I must’ve been the last person to see her. I was there, that night.’

  I knew they would get to me, sooner or later. It’s simply a routine enquiry, I told myself. I had researched my part with a great deal more thoroughness than I had researched Samantha Seymour. I knew exactly what I had done that Tuesday evening – oh, so long ago. The evening when so many lives had been changed, for ever. I had marked out my actions and learnt my lines. Reality slipped away as my character gained flesh and plausibility. I did my usual exercises, asking myself questions. What exactly did I have for dinner? Did I take a bath? What book did I read? (I had decided against TV, they might ask me which programme.) They were the sort of questions I had told Lila to ask herself all those months ago, on the set of Bump. Questions designed to thicken up a new persona. This time, however, there was a certain raw urgency to my self-examination. It was like suddenly having to use my Grade One Lifesaver skills after being thrown into the North Sea.

  I repeated to myself: Remember, they won’t be suspicious. There was nothing to link myself with any of this. Nobody knew my connection with Trevor, and my connection with Lila was by now of the most tenuous kind. I had gone to ground for so many weeks that I had all but disappeared from her life and that of her entourage. My only slight worry was the way I had questioned Roly about her, but the police weren’t to know that. He didn’t think there was anything suspicious about it. After all, I gossiped with him about most of his glitzier clients.

  They weren’t interested in me. They were interested in Lila. What she was doing that night; how she behaved. That was all.

  Sure enough, that evening I had a visitor. He was a detective; a young, freckly, red-haired guy called McConnell. He wore a tweed jacket and grey trousers; he looked as if he had borrowed his father’s clothes to lend himself gravitas. Nothing is as you expect it; the shock can put you off-balance. I had visualised a pair of slack-bellied, gum-chewing cops. But then I had only seen this sort of thing on the TV.

  ‘Nice place you’ve got,’ he said conversationally, glancing around. ‘Nice location.’

  ‘I rent it from a friend. But she’s not supposed to sub-lease so – oops!’ I clapped my hand to my mouth. ‘Shouldn’t have told you that.’

  He smiled.

  I said, ‘It’s such terrible news. I can’t believe it. Do sit down. Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  I went into the kitchen and put on the saucepan of water. ‘Americans don’t have kettles, do they,’ I called out. ‘One of the many funny things I’ve discovered. Would you like a biscuit – sorry, cookie?’ I brought in the tin. ‘I’m always making mistakes.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’ he asked. ‘In New York City?’

  Don’t lie. Not about this stuff. They can check up on it. ‘Since October.’

  ‘You like it?’

  I nodded. ‘Sure. It’s an exciting place, the Big Apple.’ I shivered. ‘But violent, too.’

  ‘My grandparents came from your side,’ he said. ‘Scotland.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Kirkcaldy. You been there?’

  I shook my head, setting out the sugar bowl and the milk jug. ‘But I’ve heard the countryside’s very beautiful.’ Absurdly, I suddenly felt like my mother. This was just the way she talked.

  I went into the kitchen and poured the boiling water into the tea cups. I felt totally unreal, as if we were both playing in some drawing-room drama at Windsor Rep. We both looked such imposters.

  When I returned, he had taken out a notebook. I put the teacups down on the table. ‘Sorry there’s no teapot,’ I said. ‘They’d have that in Kirkcaldy.’

  ‘You saw Miss Dune on Tuesday night, am I right?’ he asked.

  My eyes widened. ‘When exactly did she do it? If she did it. The whole thing is so extraordinary!’ I sat down. ‘I went round to visit her, oh at about eight. Thereabouts. I didn’t look at my watch.’

  He scribbled in his notebook. ‘You know her well?’

  ‘Not really. Of course I admired her work. I mean – admire her work. I’d met her on a couple of films. We’d rather lost touch. But when I heard she was pregnant I was thrilled! I knew how much she wanted a child. So I couldn’t help myself – I rushed round with a bottle of champagne.’

  ‘What happened, exactly?’

  I shrugged. ‘Nothing unusual. She seemed very . . .’ I paused. ‘Revved-up.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ He hadn’t eaten his biscuits. ‘Was her behaviour unusual?’

  ‘She’s very changeable, you know. Very volatile. I just thought she was excited about the baby.’

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘Not much.’ I said. ‘I hadn’t seen her for such a long time, you see. We’d lost touch.’

  ‘Did you see her consume any alcohol?’

  I shook my head. ‘We had lemonade. She said she hadn’t had a drink for a while now – it has a really bad effect on her.’

  He looked up. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  I took a sip of my tea, flinching; it scalded my lips. ‘I don’t know. Just something I heard. Other people would know better than I do.’

  I watched his bent, gingery head as he wrote. Through the wall I heard the murmur of my neighbour’s TV; it seemed loud, tonight. The window was open and I heard the clatter of their dishes in the kitchen.

  ‘Did she talk about Mr Parsons?’ he asked.

  ‘Mr Parsons?’ I shook my head. ‘Not really. Well, just a bit.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  I paused. ‘I can’t really remember. I’m sure it was nothing bad. She didn’t mention any of that business.’

  He looked up sharply, his pen poised. ‘What business was that?’

  ‘Would you like another biscuit?’ I offered him the tin. ‘Cookie.’

  ‘What business was that, Miss Sampson?’

  ‘I’m sure she’d forgotten all about it. It was so . . . tacky.’ I paused. Through the wall came a muffled burst of studio laughter. ‘Didn’t you read about it, in the papers? I’m sure there wasn’t any truth in it.’ I gazed at him, wide-eyed. ‘I mean, who could possibly fall for somebody else when they had Lila Dune?’

  He looked at me speculatively. The teabag lay in his tea like a drowned mammal.

  ‘Shall I?’ I picked up the string and pulled it out.

  I realised, with some apprehension, that he was reasonably intelligent. At first he had seemed too young to be any good at his job, but that was probably just a sign of my own age.

  ‘Can you remember anything else?’ he asked. ‘What happened next?’

  ‘She said she was going to bed. She had an early call and she was going to take a pill. So I left her – Oh, I don’t know. Haven’t a clue. Maybe eight-fifteen. Eight-thirty. I wasn’t there long.’

  ‘And there’s nothing else you remember? Nothing unusual?’

  I sat, thinking. I desperately wanted a cigarette but I didn’t dare get one out and light it. I looked at my handbag, lying on the floor near his feet. Lila’s keys were in there! Just inches from his shoes.

  I shook my head. ‘I just came home, fixed myself some dinner and read my book.’

  He got to his feet. ‘Thank you, Miss Sampson. You’ve been very helpful. If you think of anything else – anything at all – just call me, or one of my colleagues.’

  He gave me his card. My careful rehearsed alibi was not going to be needed. That was because he wasn’t interested in me, of course. Only in Lila. As per usual. This time, however, I felt airy with relief.

  I went round to see Roly, later
that evening. He was terribly distressed. He collapsed on the settee; I knelt beside him and stroked his damp jowls. He was perspiring heavily.

  ‘I’ve just called Ralph,’ he said. This was Ralph Kahn, Lila’s lawyer. ‘You won’t believe this. They found a letter from Trevor, calling the whole thing off.’

  ‘Calling it off?’

  ‘Saying he didn’t want to see her any more.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘He says this to her, and she’s going to have his baby! What kind of a man is that?’ He threw up his hands. ‘Then they found all these books.’

  I jerked back. ‘What?’

  ‘Books on homicide, they found. A whole pile of them. In her apartment.’

  I stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Me, I didn’t believe it either. All those books she had – unsolved murders, transcripts of trials, that type of thing. She says it’s for this project they were working on, her and Trevor, but it’s kind of hard to believe. I mean, she ain’t no Vassar graduate. We all know that. Sweetheart, I don’t know what I think any more.’

  I stroked his bald head. It was as smooth as the polished knob at the top of the banisters. I used to grip the banisters, as a child, and gaze at the drop below.

  ‘Shall I fix us a hot drink?’ I asked.

  I went into the kitchen and poured some milk into a saucepan. He wanted hot milk, because his stomach was playing up.

  When I turned round his cat was standing there, staring at me with her yellow eyes. I thought: if animals could talk. I poured some milk into a saucer for her but she turned around and walked out of the room. She held her fluffy tail high, revealing the pink knot of her anus.

  Roly seemed to have shrunk. He sat, huddled, in the formal splendour of his room. He usually switched on the lamps, to make it cosy; tonight he hadn’t bothered. I sat down next to him in the gloom. I knew the reason for his distress; he himself had doubts about Lila. Absurdly, I suddenly felt sorry for him.

  ‘She’s been acting kind of strange recently,’ he said. ‘I didn’t tell you, honey. But why not, now?’ With his teaspoon, he lifted the skin off his milk. It rose like a tiny tent. ‘These things been happening, things she couldn’t remember she’d done.’

  ‘What things?’ I asked.

  ‘Some item of clothing, she found it in her closet. Fidelia swears she didn’t pick it up at the dry cleaner’s, and Lila can’t remember collecting it either. Irma said that really spooked her. Maybe she’s mistaken, who knows? And there was some other misunderstanding. About a grocery delivery.’

  ‘Really?’

  He nodded. ‘Like, she’s been experiencing blackouts. Irma was really concerned. See, there’ve been . . . problems in the past. But Lila, she worked hard on them, we thought she’d come through that.’ He sighed.

  I turned away. Behind the glass, the shadow puppets looked more spiky and alive than he was. If I half-closed my eyes I could imagine their joints moving.

  ‘And then, the items in the papers didn’t help,’ he said. ‘Trevor denied there was any truth in them, but who’s believing who in all this? Jules, it’s crazy!’

  I put my arm around his plump shoulders. ‘It’s absolutely terrible,’ I said. ‘It’s crazy.’

  Shortly after that I went home. Roly was exhausted; he was going to go to bed. I was glad to leave. It was a strain, performing all the time. I had a splitting headache.

  It was a wild, wet night. I hailed a wreck of a cab. Its driver told me he came from Haiti. Dolls hung from his rear-view mirror; whenever he braked violently, they danced. He said he practised voodoo.

  ‘I’m in communication, through this,’ he said, tapping his CB radio. ‘I’m in communication with people all over the country.’

  Both the hood and the trunk lids were loose; as we bounced over the potholes they slammed like doors. I thought we would be stopped by the police.

  I went over the scene with Roly. The discovery of the books had shocked me; I hadn’t known they existed. Lila herself seemed to be conspiring in her own downfall. What a stroke of luck! It was uncanny.

  Everything conspired. My earlier efforts at her disorientation had damaged her credibility further, wasn’t that handy? At the time I had only meant to confuse her, and to infect her with the jealousy I myself had experienced with Trevor. I had simply meant to undermine their relationship. For once, everything was working in my favour.

  Outside my apartment, the cab jerked to a halt. The dolls swung, wildly. For the third night running there was nobody waiting for me. I gave the driver a large tip, for luck.

  As I rode up in the elevator I pictured Lila as a wax voodoo figure, punctured with pins. All these weeks I had been pushing them in, one by one. Magic, wasn’t it?

  Headlines scream. That’s a cliché, isn’t it? My father wouldn’t have liked it. The next morning, Friday, the headlines screamed at me from every news-stand. ‘FILM STAR ARRESTED,’ screamed the Post. ‘DUNE CHARGED WITH LOVER’S SLAYING,’ screamed the News. It even made the front page of the Times. I bought all the papers, took them back to my apartment and spread them over the carpet. I crouched on the floor like an animal, reading them. I couldn’t hold them up; my hands were shaking.

  In a sensational move, cops swooped at dawn on the Central Park West home of film star Lila Dune and charged her with the murder of her lover Trevor Parsons, found shot dead Wednesday. Doorman Courtney Wilson, 26, said: ‘They dragged her from the building. She was screaming.’ In tears, her maid Fidelia Hernandez, 43, said: ‘It’s all a mistake. Miss Dune wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

  There wasn’t a lot of information; not as much as Roly had told me. The printed page made it concrete, and curiously separate. Now it was a newspaper story I was finally excluded. Instead of some bizarre and dreamlike costume drama in which I was somehow involved it had simply happened to Lila. All of a sudden I could believe that now.

  I remember sitting up, in a fug of cigarette smoke, and realising with utter clarity: I’m not the stand-in any longer.

  It’s Lila’s turn. It’s Lila who’s the stand-in now.

  They held Lila for 24 hours. She was arraigned, and formally charged with murder. She pleaded not guilty. Bail was set at $200,000. All the networks were down at Foley Square – WNBC, WCBS. I think it was on Good Morning New York and the Today programme.

  My moods seesawed wildly. One moment I felt secure, the next terrified. I couldn’t believe that the wheels were turning without me and that I seemed to be getting away with it. Maybe this was just a carefully orchestrated charade, designed to lure me into complacency.

  I looked out of my window. In the office block, the secretaries sat at their screens. They read their displays; then they turned, slowly, to stare at me. Down in the street, when I went out, I saw a hot-dog stand being pushed to the corner of 6th Avenue. The man opened up the metal plates, unfolding them like a magician unfolding his box of tricks. They had stationed him there to spy on me.

  That Friday afternoon she was released. I sat huddled in my apartment and watched it on Live At Five. Outside the Criminal Courts there was a boiling scrum of reporters; they surged in the sunshine. It was only a mile or so away; if I sat still, I could almost hear the roar beyond my neighbouring buildings. I cocked my head, listening. Suddenly needing comfort, I stuffed myself with the cookies the detective hadn’t touched; I gorged on them. On the screen I watched the TV cameras poised like heavy artillery. They all pointed at the steps. The anchor-woman, a Deborah Norville double with a glossy golden chignon, talked with ill-concealed excitement about ‘the crime that has stunned the city’s showbusiness community.’ The manoeuvres seemed totally unreal, simply a publicist’s dream. New York City had come to a standstill; the very nation had ground to a halt. Well, that was how it seemed. After twenty years of second-league celebrity, Lila was all at once truly famous. One squeeze of the trigger and pow!

  I watched the TV. She appeared on the steps, flanked by men in suits. She looked hunched and diminished in a
blue coat; she wore the dark glasses which, I realised with surprise, I had myself worn. She looked as lost as a blind woman.

  The reporters surged forward; she was hustled into a waiting limo. Momentarily engulfed with braying newsmen, it pushed through the crowd and sped away.

  I switched off the TV. My sweater was sodden. I glanced up; I thought that the ceiling was leaking. Then I realised that I was drenched in sweat.

  She had looked shattered. Sitting there in my clammy clothes, only I knew why. She was not just shocked by her arrest. She was shattered by Trevor’s death. Funny how I had never thought of that. He was lost to her, for ever. She was alone now, like me.

  I didn’t think of Trev. That way madness lay. Nor did I think of Lila. She had ruined me; why the hell shouldn’t I ruin her? I felt no remorse, not then. I just felt numb. I busied myself with preparations for departure. I felt like a fox slipping away while the hounds were busy elsewhere.

  My contract was faxed to Roly’s agency. I was signed up for six episodes of The Best People. Accommodation was arranged for me in Los Angeles. I didn’t have a motorhome, a limo and videocassette rights, but it was a start. I couldn’t get out of New York City fast enough. I phoned my mother. She hadn’t heard the news about Trevor, I could tell by her voice. I asked her to check up on my flat when she next went to London. All my plants, my little babies, would probably be dead by now. I didn’t trust my neighbours to water them. I told her my news. ‘Goodness,’ she exclaimed. ‘We’ll be reading about you in the papers soon!’

  I paused. ‘What do you mean?’

  She laughed. ‘You’re a film star now!’

  LOS ANGELES – NEW YORK

  One

  I WAS AWAY in Los Angeles for seven weeks, swallowed up in another world. LA teems with new identities, with people who have changed their names and reconstructed themselves. They are their own fabrications, their own plastic surgeons. God knows where they come from; they have no past. It’s a city of outsiders. Their faces are comely but uninhabited; looking into their eyes is like looking through the windows of that clapboard house on the back lot. They are washed as clean as sand on the beach. I had met Trevor on the beach and look! The next day – no trace! Life is like filming. Nothing really happened. No trace; not even a cigarette butt.