The Understudy: A Novel Read online

  This extraordinary phantom career began with Stephen almost-but-not-quite winning huge praise for his show-stealing Malcolm in Macbeth in Sheffield, then consequently very nearly giving his heartbreaking Biff in Death of a Salesman on a nationwide tour. Soon afterward, the hypothetical reviews that he would probably have received for his might-have-been King Richard II had to be read to be believed. Diversifying into television, he had come oh-so-close to winning the nation’s hearts as cheeky, unorthodox lawyer Todd Francis in the hit TV series Justice for All, and a number of successful film roles, both here and abroad, had quite conceivably followed.

  Unfortunately, all these great triumphs had taken place in other, imaginary worlds, and there were strict professional rules about submitting your parallel-universe résumé. This unwillingness to take into account events in other space-time dimensions meant that Stephen was left with his real-life CV, a document that reflected both his agent’s unwillingness to say no, and Stephen’s extraordinary capacity, his gift almost, for bad luck. It was this real-life version of events that brought him here, to London’s glittering West End.

  At the age of eight, visiting London for the first time with his mum and dad, Stephen had thought Piccadilly Circus was the center of the universe, an impossibly glamorous, alien landscape, the kind of place where, in an old British sixties musical, a dance routine might break out at any moment. That was twenty-four years ago. It had since become his place of work, and coming up from the hot, soupy air of the tube station into the damp late-October evening, all Stephen saw was a particularly garish and treacherous roundabout. Nearby, an adenoidal busker was doggedly working his way through the Radiohead songbook, and the chances of a dance routine breaking out seemed very slight indeed. Stephen barely even noticed Eros these days, surely the most underwhelming landmark in the world. If he bothered to look up at all, it was only to check the digital clock under the Coca-Cola sign, to see if he was late.

  7:01.

  He was late. He quickened his pace.

  The Hyperion Theatre stands on Shaftesbury Avenue, in between a kitchen equipment wholesaler and an All-American Steakhouse of the type found precisely nowhere in America, the kind of restaurant that always contains at least one woman weeping. Pushing and jostling his way through the crowds, still looking a little blue-gray from his own autopsy, he fitted in surprisingly well with the disorientated coach parties, the dazed and pale shop assistants struggling home, the doleful, homesick Spanish students offering him flyers for English classes. He hurried past an excessive number of bureaux de change, past the disreputable fast-food outlets that sold sticky, iridescent orange mounds of sweet-and-sour pork and “pizza”—thick wedges of gray dough, smeared with tomato puree and candle-wax cheese. Maybe he should eat something. Maybe a pepperoni slice. He glanced at the wedges, perspiring under high-wattage bulbs, the pepperoni glinting with oily red sweat. Maybe not. Maybe he should wait until after work—7:03 now, which meant that he was technically late for the half-hour call. The theater was in sight now and, looking east along Shaftesbury Avenue, he could see the immense billboard of Josh Harper looming above the crowds, three stories high.

  On the billboard, the Twelfth Sexiest Man in the World stood in a puffy white shirt open to the waist, and a pair of tight black leather breeches of questionable historical veracity. In his right hand he held a rapier with which he lunged toward the passersby, while in his left hand he held a book high above his head, as if to say, “I’ll just finish this duel, then get back to writing Don Juan.” Across his pelvis were scrawled the words Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know in an extravagantly loopy hand, designed to denote literary class and historical authenticity. “A tour de force! Josh Harper is Lord Byron,” proclaimed the billboard, the italicized “is” settling the argument once and for all. “Strictly Limited Season!” Three months ago, back in August, when he’d first seen the billboard, Stephen had amused himself by imagining that “Strictly Limited” referred to Josh Harper’s abilities as an actor, but he wasn’t sure if anyone else would find this observation funny, or accurate, and, besides, there was no one to tell it to.

  Stephen glanced once more at his watch: four minutes past now, nine minutes late, very unprofessional, unforgivable for the understudy. Still, he might get away with it, as long as Donna wasn’t at the stage door. He hurried unseen past the huddle of autograph hunters waiting for Josh—eight today, not a bad score—

  “Ten minutes late, Mr. McQueen,” said Donna, standing at the stage door. Donna was the stage manager, a short, wide woman with a large, blunt face, like a painted shoe box, brittle ex-Goth hair, and the surly demeanor of an embittered games teacher. Permanently dressed in regulation faded black denim, she carried the regulation big bunch of keys, which she now twirled round on her finger like a six-shooter.

  “Phew!” said Stephen. “It’s like Piccadilly Circus out there!”

  “Doesn’t get any funnier, Stephen.”

  “Sorry, Donna, it’s the tube…”

  “Not an acceptable excuse,” grumbled Donna, dialing her mobile.

  “You’re cheerful today, what’s up with you?”

  “He’s not here,” said Kenny, the doorkeeper, from behind his desk.

  “He’s not here? Who’s not here?”

  “He’s not here.” Donna scowled.

  “Josh?”

  “Yes, Josh.”

  “Josh isn’t here?”

  “Josh isn’t here.”

  Stephen became aware of the sound of the blood in his head.

  “But it’s nearly curtain-up, Donna!”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that.”

  “Well—well, have you phoned him?”

  “Brilliant idea,” said Donna, taking her phone away from her ear and waggling it at him. She licked her lips, pushed her shaggy fringe out of her eyes, readying herself to leave a message for the man himself, and for a brief moment she precisely resembled a fourteen-year-old girl about to ask a boy if he wanted to go ice-skating with her.

  “Josh, sweetheart, it’s your Aunty Donna here at the theater. You’re late, young man! I’ll have to put you across my knee,” she mooned saucily into the air, tweaking the studs in her earlobes. “Anyway, we’re very worried about you. Hopefully you’ll walk through the door any second now, but if not, give us a call. Otherwise, we’ll have to send young Stephen on…”

  Stephen stood nearby, unhearing, rocking backward and forward slightly on the balls of his feet, making the high, humming noise he made in times of stress. Here it is, then, he thought. Finally—the Big Break. After all, this had never happened before. The Twelfth Sexiest Man in the World was always on time. Until this moment, Stephen had been quietly accepting of his fate, doomed to shadow not just the most successful, most popular, arguably the most talented young actor of his generation, but also the healthiest and luckiest. No matter what glamorous debauch he’d been to the night before, no matter what time he’d stumbled out of some Soho drinking den or premiere party, Josh would be there, 6:50 on the dot, signing autographs at the stage door, flirting with the wardrobe department, dimpling his cheeks, tossing his hair. Josh Harper was invincible. If, God forbid, someone shot him, he’d almost certainly smile, and reveal the bullet gripped daintily between his large white teeth.

  But not today. While Donna cooed onto Josh’s voice mail, Stephen was imagining a number of lurid scenarios—

  Josh Harper tumbling down the treacherous cast-iron spiral staircase of his luxurious warehouse apartment…

  Josh Harper struggling to pull his shattered leg from beneath the faulty home gymnasium, the phone lying just inches away…

  Josh Harper clutching his belly and sliding beneath the blond-wood table of the exclusive sushi restaurant, his handsome face a virulent green…

  Josh Harper smiling bravely as plucky paramedics race to extract him from the wheels of a runaway Number 19 bus…

  “I…I can’t…can’t feel my toes…”

  “Not to worry, sir, Mr. Harper, w
e’ll have you out in just a mo.”

  “But you don’t understand, I’ve got to be at the theater in five minutes.”

  “Sorry, but the only theater you’ll be seeing tonight is the operating theater…”

  “Right, Stephen,” sighed Donna, looking at her watch, and thinking the unthinkable, “we’d better get you in costume then. Just in case.”

  Stephen was barely aware of the journey down the corridor to the number-one dressing room. He had a vague floating sensation, as if Donna were pushing him on a gurney. So, this is how it is, he thought, this is what good luck feels like. Though by no means a spiteful man, Stephen had been fantasizing about just such a glorious catastrophe, six days a week, twice on Saturdays and Wednesdays, for the last three months now. When Stephen told Josh to break a leg, he meant it: break in two places, compound fractures, please. This was, after all, the harsh algebra of the understudy’s job—for Stephen to succeed, Josh would have to suffer; an incapacitating disease, or a flesh wound of some sort, something in between flu and a mild impaling, something to take him down for between, say, forty-eight and seventy-two hours. Just long enough for Stephen to do the show tonight, refine his performance for tomorrow, get Terence the director back in, the casting people, the film producers, maybe even a critic or two, maybe discreetly call some other, better agents, the real high-fliers. The snap of an Achilles tendon, the wet pop of an appendix, a spleen even, were all that separated Stephen from the chance to turn his life around.

  They were in Josh’s dressing room now, Stephen pulling off his coat and shoes, Debs from Wardrobe standing by, holding the costume, laundered and pristine, as Stephen started to undress. Donna was on the phone to the stage door. “No sign of him yet?…Right, we’ll give it five minutes, then we’ll make an announcement…. He’s here, getting ready…. Yes, I know…. Okay, well, keep me posted….”

  Thank God, thought Stephen, he’s not okay.

  Debs from Wardrobe held out Byron’s leather breeches, and Stephen took them solemnly, and started to pull them on. He had never boxed professionally, and was unlikely ever to take it up, but he imagined that this was what it felt like before a big fight: the reverence, the sense of ceremony. He tried to clear his head, to find some kind of calm, focused place, but in his mind’s eye he was already picturing the curtain call….

  Lights fade to black at the end of the show, and a hush falls over the audience. Moments pass. Then the applause breaks like thunder, great rolling waves of it. Donna and the rest of the team stand in the wings, big, beefy, moist-eyed stagehands with tears in their eyes applauding, pushing a modest Stephen C. McQueen reluctantly back onto the stage. Then the roar of the audience in his ears as they rise as one, bunches of flowers skidding across the stage to his feet. Great waves of love and respect and validation hit him, nearly knocking him off his feet. Shielding his eyes against the spotlight, he squints out into the audience, and spots the faces of the people he loves—Alison, his ex-wife; Sophie, his daughter; his parents; his friends—all grinning and laughing, screaming and shouting. He catches his ex-wife’s eye, wide with newfound admiration and respect—“You were right all along,” she seems to be saying. “You were right to hold out, you were right not to give up. You are an actor of rare and exquisite depth and talent, and if you believe in something strongly enough, dreams really do come…”

  “Fuck me, bollocks, shit, hi people, sorrysorrysorry I’m late…”…and panting, and tossing his hair, the Twelfth Sexiest Man in the World tumbled into the dressing room, entering, as always, as if someone had just thrown him a stick.

  Stephen stopped putting on his leather trousers.

  “Josh! You were about to give your Aunty Donna a heart attack!” beamed Donna, skipping to the door and tousling his tremendous hair. “Mr. McQueen here was just about to go and put your cozzy on.”

  “Sorry, Steve, mate,” Josh pouted apologetically, head cocked to one side. “You must have thought it was your big break come at last, I expect.”

  “Well, you know…”

  Josh rubbed his arm in matey consolation. “Well, not today, I’m afraid, Steve, my friend. Not today…”

  Stephen forced something that approximated the shape of a smile, and started to climb out of the leather trousers. It was like landing on the moon, and being asked if you wouldn’t mind staying behind and watching the capsule.

  “So what is your excuse then, you bad boy?” Donna scolded Josh indulgently.

  “No excuse, just had a bit of a personal situation on the home front, if you know what I mean.”

  Stephen handed the leather trousers back to Bev, who smiled sympathetically and rehung the costume on the rail, ready for its rightful owner. Stephen saw that Donna was now sitting on his own pair of trousers.

  “Excuse me, Donna…” said Stephen, standing a little behind her. “Well, Josh, you’re a very, very naughty boy,” mooned Donna, enthralled.

  “I know, I know, I know!” said Josh, taking Donna’s large hands and gallantly kissing the knuckles. “Tell you what, you can come round and spank me after the show.”

  “Could I just get my trous…?” said Stephen.

  “I might take you up on that.”

  “And so you should.”

  “You’re sitting on my…”

  “I will then.”

  “Come to the dressing room.”

  “…If you could just…”

  “I’m looking forward to it.”

  “…just let me…”

  “…Not as much as I am. Bring a bottle! And a friend!”

  “…Oooh, saucy boy…”

  “Do you think I could get my trousers, please, guys?” said Stephen, grabbing them, and tugging. Donna stood, glaring at him for breaking the spell. A moment passed.

  “Well, I’d better get the old makeup on!” said Josh, tossing his locks. “Can’t keep the people waiting,” and he held Donna’s head between two hands like a basketball, kissed it with a loud “Mmmmmmoi,” and settled in front of his mirror.

  “Shestooduponthebalconyinexplicablymimickinghimhiccupingandamicablywelcominghimin…”

  In the corridor, Donna scowled at Stephen. “You look awful, by the way,” she said. “Your face is completely gray.”

  Stephen rubbed his hairline and examined his fingertips for traces of makeup; small smudges of mackerel blue and gray. He couldn’t tell Donna he’d been moonlighting. “Just a little bit…glandy, that’s all,” he said, rubbing either side of his jawline with his fingertips to prove the point.

  “Honestly, Stephen, you’re always ill. If it’s not your glands, it’s pleurisy, or gastric flu, or your misplaced bloody coccyx,” she said, then stomped off to get ready for curtain-up, her prison warder’s keys rattling against her hip as she went.

  Stephen stood for a moment and watched her go. Once again, he was left with the sneaking suspicion that understudying someone like Josh Harper was a little like being a life jacket on a jumbo jet: everyone is pleased that you’re there, but God forbid they should actually have to use you.

  The Man in the Black Wool/

  Lycra-Mix Unitard

  Stephen C. McQueen loved acting. Some people are passionate about football, or the three-minute pop song, or clothes, or food, or vintage steam engines, but Stephen loved watching actors. All the years spent gazing at movies on telly in the afternoon, curtains closed against the summer sun, or in the front row of the local flea-pit cinema had taken their toll, and while other teenagers had had pictures of footballers or pop stars on their walls, Stephen had pictures of people who pretended.

  Over the years William Shatner, Doug McClure, Peter Cushing and Jon Pertwee had lost their seats in the pantheon, to be replaced by Al Pacino, Dustin Hoffman, Paul Newman and Laurence Olivier. Years passed, and he’d begun to notice girls—in this case, Julie Christie, Jean Seberg and Eva Marie Saint, occasionally going behind their backs with a succession of Bond girls.

  And now here Stephen was himself, pretending for a living and
, when the opportunities arose, he loved this too. Of course, he was aware that, as a profession, actors had any number of faults, most of them beginning with the prefix “self-,” and that there were times when he felt embarrassed—ashamed, even—to be connected with such a silly, frivolous, fantastical world. But he also felt that there was a kind of integrity there in the very best performances, a kind of skill, an art, even. Yes, actors could be vain and pretentious, precious and pompous, sentimental and shallow, affected and lazy and arrogant, but it needn’t be that way, need it? He thought of Alec Guinness, silhouetted in the doorway in The Ladykillers, or the tremendous slow-dawning smile that lights up Shirley MacLaine’s face at the end of The Apartment, or Brando and Steiger in the back of the car in On the Waterfront, or Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove or Walter Matthau in pretty much anything, and he’d become inspired all over again. That ability to make complete strangers double up with laughter, or squirm with anxiety, or clench their fists in indignation, or scream, or weep, or wince, or sigh, just through the act of pretending—well, if you can do that and get paid for it, then surely that had to be the best job in the world.

  As for celebrity, he had no desire to be famous, or at least not globally famous like Josh Harper. He had no expectation of seeing himself on a fridge magnet or a Happy Meal. He did not want his old cigarette butts sold on eBay, had no pressing need for the best tables in restaurants, no secret desire to be photographed with a telephoto lens looking paunchy in trunks on someone’s private island. Fame only interested him as an inevitable and not entirely unpleasant side effect of doing good work. All he wanted was fully employed fame. Nod-of-recognition fame.

  Which made it all the more frustrating to be stuck in an acting job that involved virtually no acting whatsoever.

  Stephen headed away from Josh’s dressing room, back along the corridor painted two shades of glossy dark green some time in the fifties, giving it an old-fashioned, institutional feel, like a ritzy TB sanatorium. He received consolatory nods and never-minds from Debs from Wardrobe, Chrissy the ASM, Sam the lighting guy.