Heartbreak Hotel

  Back home she was helpless but Neville didn’t seem to mind. He seemed to find it endearing, but that was love for you. Sometimes he joked that he was the wife. He cooked, he cleaned. He was a keen recycler and despaired for the planet. She laughed when she saw him refilling his plastic bottle from the tap but he took these things seriously and found the profligacy of filming insane. The waste! The carbon emissions! The madness of blanketing a landscape in fake snow for a scene that ended on the cutting-room floor!

  ‘But it’s a movie about global warming,’ she said.

  ‘Doesn’t that strike you as somewhat ironic?’

  She kept quiet about the fact that every day a 4x4 was dispatched to London to collect lunch for their star, some gluten-free vegan nonsense cooked by the chef at the Meridian, a round journey of 120 miles. Or that one of the actors was flown in from LA to speak a single line. Nowadays she hardly talked about her work. Besides, Neville knew none of the people involved and celebrity gossip didn’t interest him.

  This was a shame. Her hot, stuffy trailer was a confessional. All actors were insecure; under the pitiless glare of the mirror lights they were at their most vulnerable. For hours each day she was closeted with them in perfumed intimacy, powdering and painting, making them beautiful, making them younger. On set she was their ally. Between takes she sprang into action, her belt stuffed with brushes, darting around the stars’ faces like a hummingbird, a dab here, a dab there. Nobody in the camera crew talked to the actors; they lit them, they shot them, but they were busy and they were blokes. It was Amy and her colleagues who heard about the marital problems, the tantrums on set in some previous movie, and which film star was secretly gay and supplied with a beard – some decoy female to be snapped canoodling with him as they emerged from the Ivy.

  ‘They roped me in once,’ Amy said, over supper. She told Neville about a Hollywood star. ‘There had been rumours, see, and it would’ve killed his career. He was having a thing with one of the sparks and somebody got wind of it. The sparkie was sworn to silence because if he went public he’d never work again. So the publicist takes me aside and tells me to ditch the jeans and scrub up. Next thing I know I’m in some swanky nightclub and this guy’s all over me, tongue down my tonsils, horrible thing like a slug, God knows where it had been, and someone’s popping the old flashbulb and next day it’s all over the papers. My fifteen minutes of fame.’

  Neville passed her the broccoli. ‘Do you think we ought to have a baby?’

  Sometimes Amy felt she didn’t know him at all. They were in coracles, if that was the word for them, frail vessels anyway, tossed around in the sea. Occasionally they stretched out their hands and touched and then the waves swooshed up and they were lost.

  ‘What, now?’ she asked.

  ‘What do you mean, what, now?’ Neville put down the dish. ‘We’re not getting any younger. Well, you aren’t. In biological terms.’ He gazed at her across the table. ‘We love each other. We’re here. Isn’t this what we do?’ He reddened. ‘I’m sorry, I’m saying this all wrong.’

  ‘It’s me who’s sorry.’

  She had no idea what she meant. They both inspected the tablecloth.

  ‘Don’t you want to go into politics?’ she blurted out.

  ‘What difference would that make?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She didn’t know anything. Her life was a mess and she had thought Neville would solve it. She knew that he had been lonely too, she had sensed it on her doorstep. Suddenly she longed to pack her bags and hightail it out of there, arriving at some unit base in fuck knows where, with its joshing and joking and bacon butties and its punishing schedule that stopped you thinking. Could she really have a family with this man?

  ‘My dad once hit me with a frying pan,’ she said. ‘Did I ever tell you that?’

  Neville frowned. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Look at me, Amy. Concentrate for once.’

  ‘You sound like a schoolteacher.’

  ‘For God’s sake, this is important!’ Neville leaned over and touched her fingers. ‘Do you want to get married? Is that it?’

  Hurt, she snatched back her hand. ‘You so don’t know me!’

  Proposals weren’t supposed to be like this. Even she, as a child, had dreamed of moonlight and roses – even she, a tomboy.

  ‘We could go the whole hog if you liked,’ Neville said. ‘It would be nice to see you in a dress.’ He smiled, trying to make a joke of it.

  Amy, confused, turned away. She stared at the wall. Neville had painted the room yellow when she was away working on Kiss Me Again. It was a romcom about a mismatched couple who, surprise surprise, really loved each other.

  ‘I’d go mental,’ she said, ‘stuck here with a squalling brat.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be a brat if it was ours,’ he said. ‘Anyway, I would help.’

  ‘Oh yeah? They all say that.’ Why was she being so hard on him? She had no idea. ‘What about my work?’ she asked. ‘You can’t take a child on set.’

  Neville stood up and collected the plates. ‘Forget it,’ he muttered.

  That night, in bed, he turned away from her and lay there, hunched. She cupped herself against his backbone. She knew she had upset him, but then he had upset her. Everything they said, recently, came out wrong. She reached down and cupped his curled, defeated cock in her hand. It filled her palm, as soft as a marshmallow. He didn’t respond.

  A moment passed. Her hand felt embarrassed, so she removed it. Neville’s body seemed unknowable to her. Outside, people shouted in the street; a car door slammed.

  A little later Neville’s breathing deepened. She thought he had fallen asleep but he was just taking a breath to speak. He said: ‘They’ve made me redundant.’

  ‘What?’

  He spoke into the pillow. ‘I’ve lost my job.’

  Amy tried to pull him round to face her but he wouldn’t move.

  ‘Oh, Nev.’

  ‘The council’s slashing the libraries budget so bang goes my career.’

  She laid her hand on his hip. This seemed friendlier than clutching his penis. He was a thin man; his backbone was knobbly against her breasts.

  ‘This country’s in bloody meltdown,’ he said. ‘Know what services the council’s cutting? Respite care, youth clubs, home visits. Know how much the CEO of Barclays took home last year? Want a guess?’ He flung himself on his back and stared at the ceiling.

  Amy hadn’t a clue. The whole economic thing had rather passed her by. ‘When’s it going to happen?’ she asked.

  There was a silence. ‘Last month,’ he said.

  She sat up. Neville cowered, flinching. ‘Last month? What do you mean?’

  ‘I stopped work last month.’

  She switched on the light. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘You were away.’

  ‘But I came back a week ago.’

  ‘It never seemed the right moment.’

  ‘But you went off to the library every morning.’

  ‘Yes . . . well.’

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘I didn’t go, did I?’ he said.

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Mooched around,’ he said. ‘Had coffee. Helped out at the Bengali drop-in centre.’

  Amy’s head reeled. She was shocked, of course. And hurt that he hadn’t told her. And sorry for him, that he had lost his job. All those things, plus it was so weird, so unlike the person she thought she knew. But she didn’t know him. They were strangers, lying in bed on a stifling summer’s night. Ridiculously, she felt a small stirring of desire. Neville – dear, mild Neville – had been living a secret life and he suddenly seemed interesting to her.

  She nuzzled his neck. ‘Give us a kiss.’

  He pushed her away and stumbled out of bed. ‘Don’t you see, my life’s in ruins? I had such high hopes of everything. You. Me. The Lib Dems.’ He ran his hands through his hair. ‘You blazed into my
life –’

  ‘Blazed? I was in my pyjamas.’

  ‘So feisty and independent, striding around in your jeans, knocking back the Diet Coke. I thought here’s a girl. You wouldn’t have believed how humdrum my life was till I met you.’ Neville stood there, naked in the lamplight, hands hanging by his sides. ‘You and your glitzy life.’

  ‘Glitzy? What, getting up at five in the morning? We’re the first on set, did you know that?’

  ‘All those film stars.’

  ‘I’m only covering up their spots. I don’t know them.’

  ‘I haven’t a clue who they are. And they certainly interest you more than I do.’ He paused. ‘Even when you’re here, you’re not here.’

  Was that true? She had no idea.

  ‘Let’s face it,’ Neville said. ‘You weren’t that fascinated by the library.’ He sat down on the bed. ‘You haven’t even got any books.’

  ‘I do!’

  ‘Well. One or two. But they’re not exactly . . .’

  ‘Not exactly what?’

  He sighed. ‘Never mind.’ He leaned across her and switched off the light. ‘Let’s go to sleep. Big day tomorrow.’

  ‘Big day?’

  ‘It’s what my mother used to say, before a birthday or something.’ He tapped her nose. ‘I meant it ironically, sweetheart.’

  As luck would have it, another job came up the next month – an adaptation of Mansfield Park. There hadn’t been a lot of work around, the recession had hit the film industry, but bonnets came to the rescue and Amy found herself on location in various country mansions across Britain.

  ‘Haddon Hall, Burghley House, Wilton Place, I’m telling you, duckie, it’s like a blooming NADFAS tour.’ Eldon James, an elderly actor who played Sir Thomas Bertram, sat on the steps of his trailer smoking a cigarette. ‘And I’ve filmed in them all. In fact, I’ve owned Haddon Hall three times.’ He indicated one of the runners. ‘Who’s that nice young man?’

  ‘Son of the director,’ said Amy. ‘Don’t even go there.’

  Her mobile rang. It was Neville.

  ‘The washing machine’s flooded,’ said Neville’s voice. ‘I’m waiting in for the man from Bosch. When does a.m. stop, do you think? Twelve or one?’

  It was hot. Amy gazed at a group of extras, perspiring in their costumes. They sat outside the catering wagon, playing cards and chattering on their mobiles. The women flapped their skirts to cool their nether regions. Extras were the lowest of the low but Amy had a soft spot for the underdog. They were always going through some emotional crisis, or had a relative with an obscure terminal disease. And the amount they ate! She even felt sympathy when they elbowed each other aside to get in shot.

  ‘Nothing else much,’ said Neville’s voice. ‘The printer’s jammed again and it seems to have forgotten how to scan. I do miss you.’

  Amy didn’t miss him. The truth was, she hadn’t thought about him all morning. Even when you’re here, you’re not here.

  The third AD was rounding up the extras. They got to their feet and dusted themselves down. Amy felt flooded with love for all of them – the cast, the crew, the extras who were shuffling off for their big moment. She loved the way they pulled together, how each and every one of them was part of a team. She loved the loyalty that grew up between them, the way they created their own world, sometimes just yards from passers-by but corralled off by walkie-talkies, how they were all busting themselves to make a movie that might be rubbish but hey, who could tell? Besides, most of them would never see it.

  She could tell Neville none of this. She didn’t want to rub his nose in the fact that she was working, and though he liked movies he could never remember the names of the actors. ‘Couldn’t you ask some of your friends to dinner?’ he asked once. But her life wasn’t like that, the only time her mates got together was at the wrap party and the next day they were scattered to the four winds.

  And somewhere, deep down, she suspected that Neville considered her job trivial. He was a serious man with a social conscience. He was campaigning against the closure of the local hospice and the opening of a Tesco. All day he sat at his laptop firing off emails. He said he was as busy as ever, God knew how he had ever found time to go to work.

  Neville tried to make a joke of it but she knew he was humiliated – so humiliated that he had kept it a secret all those weeks. ‘I’m redundant,’ he said. ‘All men are redundant. You don’t even need our sperm any more.’ Not that there was any danger of that; his libido seemed to have died away completely. Amy blushed to think of her attempts to arouse him. Nowadays he often stayed working at his desk when she went to bed; she could feel him, through the wall, willing her to fall asleep. Or he would yawn theatrically and say how whacked he was. ‘And those lentils, don’t you feel bloated?’ he asked her as they undressed. ‘Do we have any Rennies?’

  Amy stubbed out her cigarette and went back to work. Nowadays Neville even slept in his T-shirt and underpants, his personal cordon sanitaire. He had become her house husband, bitter and desexed, and it was all the fault of the recession. Those fucking bankers, he said. Spawn of Satan. He had gone on a march and even sprayed a building with graffiti, that’s how angry he was. Even insects had suffered from his fury. In their early days he had charmed Amy by helping a spider out of the bath with his flannel. Now he squirted fly spray around willy-nilly, as if he was targeting hedge-fund managers, or whoever it was who had got them into this mess.

  She rubbed foundation into Eldon’s skin. It was ravaged by decades of smoking; Polyfilla would be more appropriate. ‘Remember my old mucker Russell Buffery?’ he asked her. ‘You were working on Miss Marple with us, you were practically in nappies. Big fat beardy bloke. He played a master of hounds. Just a small part. He called it a cameo, of course.’

  Amy thought for a moment. ‘Oh yes, and it turned out he couldn’t ride.’

  Eldon chuckled. ‘He kept quiet about that, the old rogue.’

  ‘I remember,’ she said. ‘They had to use a stunt double for the action scenes, the producer was well pissed off.’

  ‘Anyway, I bumped into him last week. Turns out he’s running a B&B in the wilds of Wales. Now that’s something I would pay good money to see. Chap can’t open a tin.’ He paused. ‘Gave up the acting, or should I say the acting gave up on him. Bit too fond of the old Cab Sav.’ He leaned forward, inspecting his face. ‘Still, pots and kettles. I’m bloody lucky to get this gig, we’re none of us getting any younger. And to tell the truth, I miss the old tosser.’

  At the time Amy was hardly listening. She was thinking about Neville. No, she wasn’t. She was thinking about one of the extras.

  They were filming in Stamford, a town somewhere near Peterborough. Amy left the unit base and arrived on set. The high street had been transformed, its tarmac spread with earth and horse droppings, its shops dressed as haberdashers and whatnot. They were filming a big, complex scene and the place was the usual mixture of order and chaos, rare-breed pigs milling around, the megaphone booming. Amy spotted the extra straight away. He looked great in breeches – tall, skinny, brown curly hair. No doubt that was the reason he was playing a toff, strolling past the Assembly Rooms.

  Do you want to get married? Is that it? She thought: Catch Jane Austen writing something like that. No wonder people flock to her movies. In Jane Austen films it was guys who looked like that dropping on bended knee. Would you do me the honour of consenting to be my wife?

  She remembered that night in the bath, when she had burst into tears. Did she really want to die childless and alone? Would Neville do?

  ‘Coming to the bar tonight or are you going home?’ asked one of the grips. Tomorrow was a free day and Amy was planning to drive back to London.

  At that moment the guy in breeches, leaning against a wall, caught Amy’s eye. He grinned.

  Amy said: ‘I’m staying here.’

  NCOL. Not Counted On Location.

  The extra’s name was Keith. He ran a record shop on the high street. It
s frontage had been dressed as a butcher’s emporium, the window hung with rabbits. When Amy snuck in that evening, however, she found that behind the carcasses the interior was unchanged. Keith now wore drainpipe jeans. He looked younger now, a scattering of pimples on his chin.

  ‘They’re always filming here,’ he said. ‘Last time I was a Yokel with Cow. Don’t know how you stand all the hanging about, it would drive me mental. Afterwards I had a drink with the focus puller.’

  She recognised his small-town swagger, having grown up in Leamington Spa herself. She warmed to him simply because he wasn’t Neville and her heart didn’t sink when he walked through the door. How quickly it was all unravelling!

  The laughter went first; that had disappeared a long time ago. She remembered their early days, driving past a cenotaph. Its sign said Polish War Memorial. ‘Should have brought my duster,’ said Neville. Last month she had driven past it again and tears had sprung to her eyes; he would never joke like that now. Nowadays in the car he was tense and abstracted, only breaking the silence to groan when a Tory Cabinet minister came on the radio.

  Amy thought: Why does he listen to Radio 4 when it only irritates him? Why not bellow along to the tunes on Radio 1, like I do when I’m alone? Why not have some fun?

  Keith had brought in some beers. He cracked open a couple of cans.

  ‘I recognised some of them,’ he said. ‘That actress, she was in that thing on the telly. Do you get to talk to them?’

  Amy told him about her job, about which stars had nips and tucks, about the backstage dramas.

  ‘This is just between ourselves,’ she said. ‘Don’t you dare tweet.’

  Keith’s interest pleased her; it had been a long time since she had explained her work. He seemed to find it glamorous; not trivial at all. She longed to touch him; to feel the voltage of a strange body.

  He drained his beer. ‘What tunes do you fancy?’

  ‘It’s your shop, you choose.’

  He jumped up and put a record on the turntable. Wild thing, you make my heart sing.