‘I sure wouldn’t want you for an enemy,’ said Lila to me, her eyes wide with alarm. But I wasn’t her enemy, was I? I was only her stand-in.
I was woken by the phone ringing. All of a sudden everything seemed unreal – the single, long warble of the phone, the unfamiliar room, my walk last night. I was lying in bed and it was two in the afternoon.
‘Welcome to New York,’ said a voice. ‘Was your flight comfortable? How do you like your hotel?’ It was somebody from Maizin Productions. Did I have my shooting schedule? My call sheet? They looked forward to seeing me the first day of principal photography, a car would collect me the next morning.
A car! They were treating me like a star. Maybe Lila had fixed it. I ate some afternoon breakfast in a coffee shop round the corner, bought a map and walked uptown towards Central Park. It was a beautiful, sunny Sunday, though the deep wells of the streets were in shadow. I flung back my head and gazed up at the sheer, dizzying faces of the apartment blocks. At the top, the penthouses caught the sun. I glimpsed tufts of bushes, whole trees sometimes, up there; a balcony, an awning. Lives were being lived in the sunshine; the rich and famous would be anointing their tanned limbs whilst down here in the street, where the wind blew chilly through the funnels of the cross-streets, the rest of us were buttoning up our coats. Skyscrapers cast whole neighbourhoods into darkness. I started to realise, that day, how New York is two cities, sliced horizontally. The top slice is in perpetual sunshine and peace; they even have their own birdsong up there, I found that out later. In their offices and apartments they breathe a different air. Occasionally they descend into the frenzied, sunless rat-runs but only to slip into something long and comfortable and purr to their destination. My blood throbbed; deep inside, something in me responded to this schizoid city.
Perhaps I didn’t realise it then. I don’t know really what I thought that day when I was still suspended between two lives, with no part to play because I was still invisible. To some extent we all perform, all of us. With nobody to mirror back our image we don’t exist – or we exist, utterly freely, just for ourselves. Nobody – except one stranger on the phone – even knew where I was staying. I walked into that amazing, theatrical park a free spirit, perhaps for the last time in my life. For the next day it was all going to begin.
The trees rustled, gold and bronze. Huge boulders jutted from the ground, breaking its surface like primeval creatures the city had tried to bury. A black man on rollerskates was pushing a supermarket trolley from one trash bin to the next, pulling out cans which he stored in his trolley like a squirrel hoarding nuts. There were real squirrels too, scrawny as rats, and the disco thump of radios, and couples embracing on the bleached grass. A chilly wind blew. Around me, people acted out their dramas in the open air, singly or in pairs. I criss-crossed the paths, heady with my own invisibility. Above the thinning trees rose apartment blocks, heartstoppingly high, as preposterous as painted backdrops. On one side of the park they were in shadow; on the other they caught the pearly light of the dying sun. Their windows were lit, flashing orange as if they were on fire within. I gazed up at their penthouses. Lila had told me she lived on Central Park West; which building might it be? The light was fading; I must have been walking for hours.
Then I stopped. Ahead, set into the grass, was a mosaic plaque. I peered closer; the lettering said IMAGINE.
‘This is Strawberry Fields, honey,’ said a large woman, surrounded by carrier bags. She pointed across the park. ‘That’s the Dakota, know that? That’s where he was gunned down.’
I gazed at the plaque, Lennon’s memorial. What had Chapman said? I thought it would be like the movies. Imagine what? Being someone else? Someone different? Actresses have to imagine all the time, they have to inhabit another skin, sliding into it as if they are sliding into a glove.
Through the dusk, I gazed up at the lit buildings. Lila might be up there, at this very moment. She wasn’t thinking of me, but I was thinking of her. That’s fame for you.
Imagine being Lila. When I turned, her soft hair fell across my cheek. When I turned, everybody looked.
Two
MOVIES ARRIVE IN clusters, like London buses. Sexbusters was one of those transformation pictures that were popular a few years ago – gender-benders like Tootsie, age-benders like Cocoon and Big. Bump in the Night, on the other hand, was one of those extra-terrestrial family comedies, there was a spate of them too, remember? In Bump Lila was playing a divorcée who falls for a man her teenage son hates. One day, to ingratiate himself with the boy, the man takes him to a Disneyland-type Space Park, where in the Mars Capsule something goes wrong and the boy emerges with extra-terrestrial powers. He uses these to sabotage his mother’s love-affair – misdirecting her car when she is driving to her boyfriend’s apartment, playing tricks on him and destroying their trysts with special effects. The movie was going to be shot entirely on location in New York City. And for the first time, Lila was playing not a romantic lead but a mother.
People’s looks change, just slightly, in another country. Lila looked somehow more fragile, here in New York; she seemed to have lost weight. Maybe it was the make-up, they’d had to age her up a few years. Maybe it was the way they had dressed her hair for the part; it was swept back off her cheekbones, her skin looked taut and pale. The divorcée she played, Mary-Lou, was a real-estate broker; Lila wore a slim blue business suit which revealed her wonderful legs. We were up Columbus Avenue, roped off from the crowd like circus animals, shooting a scene outside a gourmet pasta shop. I had walked in and out of its doors about twenty times already, wearing a blue jacket over my skirt. Everyone was hectic, that first morning. Lila had just said, ‘Hi, how’re ya doing?’, kissed my chilly cheek and disappeared into make-up. I trod the pavement for her, sorry sidewalk, again and again, trying to remember the names of the crew. Mart, Bob, Don, which was which? A lot of Bobs; there are always lots of Bobs, in crews.
During the lunch break I walked a block to Central Park and sat for a few minutes in the sun. I had finished my English cigarettes by now and had bought some Winstons. I sat on a bench, my eyes closed, inhaling the American tobacco and wondering what on earth I was doing here.
Somebody was breathing on me, boozily. I opened my eyes. A withered black woman was looking into my face. I jumped. She wore a yellow wig; Heidi plaits hung down on either side of her face.
‘You tell them what I said,’ she whispered. ‘You tell them what I said. See the fuckers’ faces then.’
The cinematographer on this film was pernickety, too. That afternoon they put me into a blonde wig, swept back like Lila’s hair. I sat in the make-up trailer having it fitted by someone called Rodney. He was a distinguished-looking gay with silver sideburns.
He glanced down at the book I had been reading, a paperback of Washington Square. We started talking about books. One of the more curious facts about film shoots is that, despite the interminable longueurs, nobody reads. They barely even glance at a newspaper.
‘You’ve got a good, strong face,’ he said. He looked at me, his head on one side. ‘Enigmatic.’
‘Is it?’
‘Asks the lady, enigmatically.’ He smiled. ‘You British, I never know what you’re thinking. It’s like you’ve been trained in some secret service.’
‘It’s called a middle-class upbringing.’
He took a pin and fixed up a trailing strand of my wig. ‘You’re smart. The Thinking Guy’s Lila Dune. Lila, she’s a sensational-looking woman – but she has the intellect of an azalea.’
Suddenly, we both burst out laughing.
Outside the Plaza Hotel,’ it smells of dung. There are these horse-drawn carriages there, waiting for out-of-towners like me. That evening I hired one, for a twenty-dollar clop around Central Park. The driver was a young, friendly chap; he touched the horse with his whip and we jolted forward. We left the traffic behind, it was reduced to a faint roar. Amongst the trees it was hushed and primitive.
‘Like to stargaze?’ he ask
ed.
Thinking he was going to point out the constellations, I nodded insincerely. But he was pointing to the pinpoints of lights way up, at the top of the apartment blocks.
‘Diana Ross, that’s her apartment,’ he said.’ When she’s in town.’ He hummed Baby, baby, where did our love go? ‘You like Woody Allen?’ He pointed. ‘He lives there, that’s his, he has the whole penthouse floor and Mia, she’s across the West Side. I’m a movie nut.’
I swung my head. Through the trees the buildings looked spectacular, some of the old ones were floodlit. They rose, crenellated cliffs of them. They looked even more improbable at night, like tricks of the camera.
‘That’s a landmark building.’ He pointed to one of the apartment blocks. ‘Lila Dune, the film star, she lives there.’
I didn’t reply.
‘You-seen any of her movies in England?’ he asked.
‘No. Who is she?’
‘Who’s Lila Dune? You don’t know? She’s, like . . .’ He lifted his hands from the reins and made an hourglass shape. ‘Blonde. Drop-dead sexy. Done a lot of TV work. Plus fifteen movies, maybe twenty. Kind of so-so, most of them. But with a bod like that, who’s worrying? Career went down the tubes for a while, she had some problems. She ain’t so young no more, either. But the buzz is it’s picking up.’
‘I don’t know her,’ I said, steadying myself as we clopped around a corner. ‘I’m kind of busy. I have two little kids, they lead me a merry dance.’
‘Boys? Girls?’
‘One of each. And then in the evening I have to go to the theatre.’
‘You an actress?’ he asked.
I nodded. ‘Heard of Paul Scofield?’
‘Sure.’
‘Lovely man.’ I gazed at the black branches of the tree, tangled against the sky. ‘I played Cordelia to his Lear.’
‘No kidding!’
I told him about my triumphant Stratford season, and my following year at the National. I told him about my house in Holland Park and my huge, boisterous dog that knocked down the postman but meant no harm. It was so dark that he couldn’t see my face. I spoke to the jolting branches.
Tell them, said the woman with the custard-coloured plaits. See the fuckers’ faces then.
Those first few days, my feelings about New York City veered from one extreme to the other. Sometimes it seemed the most glamorous city on earth, at others an asylum for the terminally insane. I felt precariously balanced; one tiny push and I would tumble down some chute, into chaos. I would join those people shouting in the dark. I felt alert, alive, as poised as an animal sniffing danger. I felt this from the beginning, long before anything started happening. I can remember it, I really can.
My hotel was midtown; most mornings I had an early call and took a cab to wherever the shooting schedule sent me, uptown, downtown, wherever. I have a good sense of direction – something that is not a great deal of use to me here. I started to plot out the shape of Manhattan. I bought some trainers – Reeboks – like everyone else; they were comfortable and noiseless. At night I walked. One night I walked right down to Wall Street, fifty blocks or more, I felt as lithe and silent as a panther. I looked into lit lobbies, where night porters sat at their desks, where fluted marble columns cast a suffused glow and where elevator lights blinked, rising and descending with their invisible cargo. Once, when I was passing, the doors of an elevator slid open and there was just emptiness inside. Up in the sky, lives were being lived and I felt intensely alone. Even the street sounds are different, with tall buildings on either side; there’s a hollowness, an echo.
I missed Trev, my body ached for him, especially when I got back to my hotel room, but I knew that he was missing me, he said so on the phone, and our temporary separation felt so sweetly painful that I almost relished it. I wanted him to be impressed with my growing familiarity with the streets and my insouciant use of newly acquired slang. I was starting to call lorries ‘trucks’ and queues ‘standing in line’. I knew how to buy subway tokens. The things I was beginning to take for granted, I was sharing them with him in my head. He was always with me. In a strange way we were becoming habitués together, if only he knew. I wanted to teach him about the city. I loved being the older, experienced woman. I wanted him to notice what I was noticing, because what was the point, otherwise? I would be impressed with myself, if only he were here to see. Sometimes I felt pleasantly dreamy about him; sometimes I felt angry, that he wasn’t with me. Feelings about somebody can fluctuate even more in their absence. My normal input was cut off; I was like a hospital generator, fuelled by my own manufactured energy. I sent him packets of Hershey Kisses, and a book of James Dean photos from a shop called Mythology. I missed his laughter, desperately. I missed that almost more than his body. I sent him silly postcards.
Lila was busy with costume fittings, those first few days, and I hardly saw her. But she was nice to me when we met. In some curious way she seemed to like me – curious, because we were such an ill-matched couple. We may have looked similar, once my wig was fitted, but we had so little in common. Even more curious, she seemed to need me. She asked me into her trailer and we sat there, drinking some disgusting ginseng tea she had been told was fabulous for the pores. She lay back, wrapped in a satin robe, her eyes closed, while her little white dog snapped at my ankles. She said her personal life was at an all-time low, she had no relationship at present.
‘My therapist says I’m getting too dependent on Orson as a displacement-substitute,’ she said. Hearing his name, the dog leaped onto her lap. She caressed him, her long red fingernails sinking into his fur. ‘He’s a placebo or something.’ She leant forward and kissed him. ‘I’m trying to get my act together without goddam men. Men are the pits.’ She had just read something about the willing victim syndrome. Lila was full of half-digested information like this – from her shrink, her diet doctor, her friends, Tarot cards, magazine articles and How-to-live-a-meaningful-life type manuals. She told her latest theories to anyone who would listen – which, as she was a film star, meant a lot more people than you or I would get.
I loved it when she asked me into her trailer, it made me feel special. She sat there at the mirror, her afternoon’s lines propped up in front of her. She inspected her face anxiously, and asked for beauty tips. I didn’t have any, of course, but she didn’t seem to mind or even notice. She never really listened to anyone else. We sat there, sealed off from the outside world, listening to her syrupy country and western tapes until Irma tapped on the door and interrupted us, glaring at me as if she were Lila’s mother and I some teenage boyfriend.
Lila was also generous to me on the set. ‘Jules here’s the best stand-in they ever gave me,’ she said to the director, Chuck Cox. He smiled at me, benignly. With Lila telling him, he had to listen. Somebody was calling him to the phone, and Walt from props was showing him two ashtrays and asking him which one he wanted Lila to throw. We were shooting a scene in a restaurant. Extras were everywhere, trying to get to a phone, weaving their way back from the coffee machine with plastic cups balanced precariously, or sitting at the tables writing their own movie scripts. Even my cabbie that morning – a rare, chatty one – had told me he was writing a movie script.
‘It’s just, like, you know how I would do it,’ said Lila. ‘It’s kinda weird.’ She laughed. ‘Maybe we met in another life, I like the idea of that.’
I smiled. ‘Maybe we were swapped at birth.’
Chuck was called away. Lila lowered her voice. ‘Seen my lines for this? This is some asshole script. What I’d give for a good writer. Where are they? Where are those guys?’
I didn’t understand, at the time, the significance of this remark. When actresses complain about scripts it is usually because their part is too small. They don’t analyse a script, the way my father used to take apart English texts and reappraise each word. They don’t have time to talk about motivation or character development, they are too busy being shunted around. Once a film is in motion it’s a series of e
scalating crises, phone calls, and massive reorganisations because it’s suddenly started to rain. I soon learnt that nobody discusses the script. It’s just fabulous. It has to be fabulous, doesn’t it, or else why else were we there, busting our guts?
Besides, Lila said that she had always wanted to work with Chuck – he was a fine, respected director, he’d done terrific stuff with A-list stars like Jessica Lange and Meryl Streep, actresses who were really taken seriously. Despite her fame, Lila was deeply insecure. This was something else I realised, as the days passed. It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? You see this beautiful face, up on the screen, and you think she’s got it all. You sit there, envying her until it burns. And, all that time, she’s burning too.
Rodney, the hairdresser, emerged from his trailer and we sat together, watching Lila throwing the ashtray at her lover, who she suspects is two-timing her. (He isn’t; it’s just some Martian mischief-making.) At each take, Lila played it more ferociously. I watched, awe-struck, as she lunged at him. Half her hair was falling down; she looked like a madwoman, one of the women I saw in Central Park. She stumbled through the restaurant, knocking over wine glasses and scattering chairs. Suddenly I remembered her in the Retro Grade night club, her eyes wild, her mascara smudged, emptying the champagne bucket over the man who had betrayed her. Even the extras looked startled – unless, as was likely, they were over-reacting to catch the director’s eye.
The floor was mopped for another take. Rodney, wielding his sprays and combs, fixed her hair. Then he came back to me and sat down. We watched.