The Understudy: A Novel (8 page)

“
D’you want to know what Josh and I just argued about?”

“Only if you want to tell me.”

“Okay, well, we’re getting ready for the party, and we’d just, you know, made out, and everything was fine, and he lay there and leaned over, with his dopey, constipated romantic-lead face, his close-up face, and said that I was”—she gave a little shudder “—I was
the wind beneath his wings
.”

“Ah.”

“…Like I’d be
pleased
, as if this was the fulfillment of some great ambition, to be somebody else’s
wind
? Anyway…then we had this big shouting match and, oh, I don’t know. It was so stupid…” For something to do, she tossed her cigarette over the railing of the ocean liner, following its trajectory with her eyes. “Well, screw him, anyway. Josh Harper can make his own damn wind…”

“Oi-oi-oi, what’s going on here, then?” a voice boomed across the rooftops. They both turned around to see a madly grinning Josh at the other end of the roof, his arms outstretched, a glass in each hand. Tottering a little behind him was a young woman in a variation on a dress: two rectangles of black leather, tied at the side with leather string that pressed into her bare flesh, advertising her lack of underwear, and making her appear elaborately trussed. She was clearly very drunk, and struggling to stay upright in high heels on the wet decking.

“We’re having a private conversation, Josh—go away!” drawled Nora.

“But Bullitt’s meant to be working. Bullitt, you complete
skiver
!” he said, his arm around Stephen’s shoulder, waggling his finger jokily under Stephen’s nose. “I don’t pay you fifteen squid an hour to stand around chatting up my missus.”

“Screw you, Josh,” murmured Nora, taking a cigarette from Stephen’s packet.

“Whooooooh!” Josh and the girl laughed conspiratorially, and for a moment Stephen felt the same crackle of tension he’d felt in the school playground, just before a fight broke out.

“Hey! Hey, hey, hey!” said Josh, draping his arm over Nora’s shoulder now. “I’m just joking, my love. Steve can do whatever he wants—we’re all mates, aren’t we?” and he planted a wet, boozy, matey kiss on Stephen’s cheek and blew a small raspberry on Nora’s bare neck. Clearly finding the raspberry less sensual than Josh might have hoped, Nora wriggled free. He grabbed hold of her waist. “Tell me—how is my favorite girl?”

“Don’t know, Josh—who is your favorite girl?”

“You are, of course. Hey, you missed me cutting my cake!”

“I did? Well, I’m sure someone videoed it.”

“They did, actually.”

“Well, there you go—the moment lives on,” drawled Nora, and even through the blur of booze, a momentary look of sincere hurt passed over Josh’s face.

Standing a little way off, the girl in the black leather patches stumbled and swore.

“I’m sorry, I am soooo rude,” shouted Josh. “Everyone, this is…” His mouth hung open slack, searching for the name.

“Yasmin,” said the girl, swaying back and forward, trapped by her heels in the wet decking. “Yasmin with a
Y.
”

“
Y
indeed,” murmured Nora, crossing one arm across her chest, and placing the cigarette in the center of her mouth like a blowpipe. “Yasmin, shouldn’t you put some clothes on, sweetheart? You’ll catch your
death
…”

By way of diversion, Josh tightened his grip around Stephen’s and Nora’s shoulders. “So! What were you two talking about then—not
me,
I hope.”

“You know, you really must stop automatically assuming that people are talking about
you,
Josh,” murmured Nora, attempting to shrug off Josh’s arm.

“I don’t!”

“There are
other
topics of conversation, you know.”

“I know, I know! I was joking!” said Josh, his arms raised in surrender. “Christ, Nora, why d’you have to give me such a hard time? I said I was sorry, didn’t I?” They all stood in silence for a moment, listening to the insistent thump of the party beneath them.

“Oh, sodding hell,” muttered Yasmin, bending, ungainly, at the knee now, struggling to wrench her strappy high heel from the decking without spilling her cocktail. “It’s fucking
free
zing up here. I’m going back in.” Stephen noticed Nora eye the back of her head, and tighten her grip on the neck of the bottle, which she held at her side, like a cudgel.

“So who’s
Yasmin
, Josh?” hissed Nora.

“I dunno—she’s a dancer or something.”

“A dancer! Ballet? Jazz? Table?”

“Funny, Nora, very funny.”

“I think I’d better head down too,” mumbled Stephen, but Nora and Josh didn’t seem to hear. Instead they stood now, eyes locked, Josh holding Nora tight by the tops of her arms, as if to prevent her leaping over the railing. Walking away, he could hear them speaking in low, urgent voices.

“So how come this complete stranger is at your birthday?”

“She’s not a stranger, she’s a…friend of a friend or something.”

“
Girl
friend of a friend?”

“I don’t know, do I? I was just trying to be sociable, you know,
pleasant
, instead of just moping about and scowling at everyone.”

“And is that why you were bringing her up on the roof? So you could be
pleasant
to each other?”

“No, to show her the view! Exactly the same as you and Steve.”

“Well, not
exactly
the same, Josh.”

“Why not the same?”

“Because at no point was I going to unbutton his fly with my teeth…”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Nora, not
this
again. Why can’t you just believe that I love you?”

“You don’t make it very easy, Josh.”

“Come here, Nora.”

“No, Josh.”

“Please…?”

Without looking back, Stephen held on to the stair rail and descended back into the party, and from the room below came the terrible sound of bongos.

Errol Flynn on Antibiotics

I
n retrospect, Stephen realized, he should never have left Nora. If he’d shinned down a drainpipe and gone home, or even jammed his hands deep into his pockets and hurled himself onto the tarmac below, the evening might still have held one or two pleasant memories. But, instead, he had decided to return to the party, as one might return to an unexploded firework, and from the moment he returned to the party, he was doomed.

Descending the spiral staircase seemed to take a great deal more concentration than climbing it—the glass steps made it seem as if he were stepping into air, and they felt disconcertingly spongy and yielding beneath his feet. Adam from the caterers was waiting at the bottom, angrily banging the ash out of ashtrays into a champagne bucket.

“And where the hell have
you
been?” he snapped.

“Just talking,” mumbled Stephen, his tongue suddenly far too big for his mouth. “Josh said it was okay.”

Adam tutted and narrowed his eyes. “ ‘Josh said, Josh said…’ Just because you know the boss, superstar, you’re still just a waiter.”

Stephen snarled at Adam’s back, then went to get another tray of drinks from the kitchen, downing in one a glass of red wine, cowboy-style.

When a large number of people have been drinking steadily for several hours, there’s sometimes a wonderful moment when everyone simultaneously reaches a state of almost perfect conviviality: relaxed, affectionate, curious, attractive, amicable and open. This perfect social moment had been achieved, for perhaps a minute and a half, then left behind, many, many hours ago. The party had mutated into something new and terrible now—drinks had been spilled, thongs had ridden up into view, the expensive hi-fi speakers had been blown but were still thumping and buzzing. Voices were raised—frequently funny voices, and names weren’t so much being dropped as hurled. A huddle of groovy, stubbly boys (wearing T-shirts that read “Dislexic” and “Your point is…?”) were standing round the mixing desk, competitively shuffling their iPods, and the music had entered its ironic-pop phase. People were vogueing ironically, crunching broken glass to powder underfoot, or they were hunched together in tight little groups, shouting and flirting aggressively. The whole room resembled a convention for drunk, deaf nymphomaniacs, and Stephen rolled invisibly through the crowd in the protective glass bubble of service, smiling blandly, keeping discreetly out of the camera-phone photos, pouring drinks and picking up abandoned half-full glasses, each one containing a lipstick-smeared cigarette butt. He found himself handing drinks to a tiny young woman in a spaghetti-strap dress, who was shouting up to a tall, thin, flamboyantly dressed man with a neat goatee that looked glued on, visibly perspiring under a tweedy fisherman’s hat; a mildly famous young actor who’d had some success playing snide, supercilious bastards.

“…I mean, telly’s okay, it pays the bills,” said the woman, chewing gum as if her jaw had been motorized, “…but theater’s my first love. It’s soooo much more exciting, that one-on-one feeling, that sense that anything can happen. I tell you, I’d give up
Summers and Snow
in a flash—in a bloody
flash
—for a chance to do a funky little new play…”

Stephen peered at the woman more closely and, yes, it was his old colleague, TV’s perky, independent-minded Constable Sally Snow, aka Abigail Edwards. Taking a glass from his tray, she caught his eye and gave what Stephen mistakenly took to be a smile of amiable recognition.

“Evenin’ all!” he said cheerily, bending humorously at the knee.

Constable Sally Snow wrinkled her nose. “I’m sorry, do we…?”

“We’ve acted together!”

“Oh. Oh. Have we?”

“Uh-huh. Last week, remember? Here’s a clue.” And he rolled his eyes up into his head, let his tongue loll out to the side. Abigail and the goateed man looked blank. “I was the Dead Guy? The killer’s fourth victim? On the mortuary slab? You fainted when the pathologist removed my lungs, remember?”

“Oh, right, right. Of course! You’re Dead Guy.”

Silence.

“The name’s Stephen, Stephen McQueen. With a
P-H, not
the famous one!” he jabbered, thinking he might as well get it in first.

“Obviously not,” drawled the man with the stuck-on beard, proving that his snide professional persona wasn’t much of a stretch, and Stephen had a sudden urge to tear his goatee off, or at least to enjoy trying.

“So—you probably didn’t recognize me with my clothes on!” he said, turning to Abigail, but a burst of Van Halen’s “Jump” obscured the remark.

“
What
did you say?” drawled the perspiring man, looking down at him from under drooping eyelids. Even through the mist of booze, Stephen realized the remark had been a mistake. He didn’t want to repeat his mistake, but saw no alternative.

“I said, she probably didn’t recognize me with my clothes on!”

“
What?”
said the man again, his hand cupped to his ear.

Working on the principle that a remark gets funnier the more it is repeated, Stephen said, “She probably didn’t recognize me with my clothes on.”

“We can’t
hear
you.”

“I said, she probably, she probably didn’t, I said she probably didn’t—”

“Speak up, please.”

“I said, she probably didn’t recognize me—”

“One more time…”

“I just said that she probably—”

“Again?”

“She probably didn’t—”…and Abigail Edwards put a sympathetic hand on his forearm, as if she were visiting a fan in hospital. “We
can
hear you. Ignore him. He’s just
teasing
you.”

Oh, right, I see. Well, in that case, maybe he’d like to just go fuck himself?
thought Stephen, before noticing the expression on their faces, and realizing that he’d actually said it too. The three of them stood, saying nothing, the man smirking and sniggering through his nose, invulnerable, Abigail biting her lip and glancing around the room, and it occurred to Stephen that if the building were any higher than two stories, he would definitely follow Van Halen’s advice, and go ahead, and jump.

“Will you excuse us, we’ve got to…” said Abigail finally, not even bothering to finish her excuse. “Come on…,” and Constable Sally Snow grabbed the goateed man, and tugged him away, as if taking him into custody. As he left, the man placed his empty glass onto Stephen’s tray.

“More washing up for you, I’m afraid.” He grinned, winked, turned and left.

Stephen stood for a moment, rocking back and forward slightly. Any last traces of boozy bonhomie he’d salvaged from Nora had evaporated now. He felt unwell. No, worse than unwell. He felt…damned. This was
hell
. And hell was not just other people, it was specifically
these
other people. He became aware that the glasses on his tray were starting to chink together dangerously, as in the early stages of an earthquake…

“Excuse me? Hello…?”…and that someone was speaking to him…

“Hello, there? Anybody hoooo-oooome?”…An extremely small, astoundingly beautiful young woman, one of the Hot Young Brits Currently Turning Heads in Hollywood, was frowning up at him from some distance below, sucking a lollipop. “The Bitch Is Back,” said the curly writing on her T-shirt. Stephen read this, and smiled, and then felt a sudden urgent need to emphasize that he was reading her T-shirt, rather than staring at her breasts.

“ ‘The Bitch Is Back’!” he said aloud, delighted to have defused what might otherwise have been a potentially embarrassing moment.

“Yes, yes, all right, very clever, now listen—we’ve spilled some red wine,” said the Hot Young Brit, pulling the lollipop from her mouth and waggling it at him. “Could you get some salt, please? If it’s not too much
trouble
?”

“Absolutely. Salt,” and unthinkingly he handed the tray of dirty glasses down to her, which she took instinctively, then stood and looked at in confusion, holding it at arm’s length, as if she’d been handed the head of John the Baptist.

“Exceeeuse me!” she drawled, but Stephen was gone, heading directly away from the kitchen and the salt, and seeking refuge, for the second time that night, in the toilet.

Miraculously, there was no queue, presumably because everyone was too far gone to find the thing, and with huge relief, Stephen locked the door behind him. The bathroom was a very different place from the rubber-and-gun-metal showroom he’d hidden in five, no, God help him, six hours ago. Even above the heady scent of the Diptyque candles you could smell the drugs and the asparagus wee. He sighed and leaned over the toilet, his arms outstretched before him, as if about to be frisked.

Did it have to be like this? Weren’t drunk actors meant to be lovable? Wild, carousing, boozy testosterone-fueled men, Burton, or Harris, or Flynn or his own namesake; bighearted, irresponsible forces of nature, filling rooms with convulsive laughter, their wild, irrepressible, boozy charm melting the hearts of beautiful women. It seemed unlikely Stephen would be melting any hearts tonight. Clinging to the cistern, Stephen wasn’t even entirely sure that he was capable of peeing effectively, and he remembered, far, far too late, that “lovable drunk” lay just outside of his range. Booze didn’t make him anarchic or funny or daring or louche. It didn’t make him irrepressible; if anything, it made him repressible. It was like some terrible self-inflicted injury, as if he’d elected to be repeatedly run over. Like any schoolboy, he knew it was a bad idea to mix grape and grain, but to go grape/grain/antibiotics/grape/grain/grain/grape/antibiotics/grain/ grape/grain was beyond stupid. He decided to blame those mystery antibiotics. Even Errol Flynn knew not to drink on antibiotics.

He looked in the mirror, and tried to focus. It felt as if he were wearing his grandmother’s glasses, but he could see that his face was puffy and slack, his eyelids heavy, his complexion the color of surgical rubber, and his head felt numb and dense, as if it had been filled with cavity-wall insulation. He ran his left hand down his right arm to locate his wrist, then his wristwatch, bringing it backward and forward in front of his eyes to find the focal point, then struggling hard to convert the physical position of the hands into some kind of meaningful information. Drunk o’clock. He was seized by a desperate, passionate desire to be sober. He closed his eyes and made a silent deal with God: please, God, make me sober now, take me home, put me to bed, and I promise, I will never, ever drink again. But God clearly had caught the last tube, because when Stephen opened his eyes the walls and floors of the bathroom were now visibly stretching and contracting around him. He
must
sober up. What did people do in films to sober themselves up? Drink coffee, take a cold shower, get slapped. He imagined it would take very little to get himself slapped.

There was a knock at the door. “What are you doooo-ing in there?” shouted an insinuating female voice outside.

“Dying,” he said quietly to himself, then rested his head on the mirror as the copper basin filled, then leaned over to splash his face with cold water.

Halfway to the sink, he stopped. On the smeared dark marble surface next to the toiletries was a short, stubby line of a flaky white substance.
Drugs.
Someone had left some drugs behind.

Outside of the occasional joint or swig from a recreational bottle of Night Nurse, Stephen was not a big drug user. His last encounter with cocaine had culminated in him giving a clench-jawed analysis of why his marriage had failed to a roomful of complete strangers, and since then he’d come to the conclusion that, when it came to the abject loss of self-respect, alcohol usually served the purpose just fine. But now desperate measures were required. Maybe he just needed that extra push, that little buzz, and wasn’t cocaine meant to sober you up, endow you with incredible self-confidence? Perhaps if he took these drugs he could salvage the evening, and be a little more like, well, like Josh Harper.

“Whatever you’re dooooing, can you hurry up, please?”

It was too much to resist. He quickly fumbled in his inside jacket pocket, found his wallet, pulled out a grubby, moist five-pound note, and rolled it as best he could into a flaccid tube, then leaned over the fat little worm of waxy cocaine and inhaled sharply. He threw his head back, felt the stuff hit the back of his throat, and tasted the distinctive soapy, chemical tang as it started to dissolve. He pinched his nostrils together tight to make sure nothing escaped, then leaned for a moment against the marble unit and waited for a wave of sublime, decadent elation and self-confidence to hit him. A few lumps remained, so Stephen licked his fingers, rubbed the white stuff deep into his gums, just as he’d seen in the movies, told himself that this was definitely the good stuff, the pure shit, and it was only at this point, as he surveyed the ranks of expensive grooming products arranged on the marble surface, and identified the chemical tang as sandalwood and musk with a back note of ammonia, that Stephen realized the waxy white substance he’d just snorted was debris from Josh Harper’s antiperspirant deodorant.

He started to perspire. The narcotic effects of snorting a deodorant stick, even Josh Harper’s, are not well documented, but it seemed that a sense of elation and increased self-confidence are not among them. Coughing and spluttering, he tried to get his head under the complicated tap fittings and struggled to take several mouthfuls of warm tap water. But his head wouldn’t quite fit in the deep copper basin, and when he tried to clamp his mouth to the mixer tap he simply succeeded in painfully scraping his gums against it, and squirting hot water down his suit. Thoughtfully someone had left a bottle of red wine, half full, on top of the cistern, so he grabbed that, and drank and drank until the soapy taste had gone, then slumped, coughing and spluttering, his back against the door.