The Understudy Read online

  “Nearly, mate, nearly,” said Michael the DSM, consolingly. “Maybe next time, eh?”

  “Maybe next time.”

  He pushed through a heavy fire door, and headed upstairs. Halfway up the underlit stairwell, he passed Maxine Cole’s dressing room, nearer the stage than his and therefore superior. Fresh out of college, and straight into the small but memorable role of “Venetian Whore,” Maxine sat, wearing a white toweling dressing gown and an elaborate early-nineteenth-century wig, her small, hard, pretty features all bunched in the center of a broad perma-tanned face, under high-arched doll’s eyebrows. Her feet, in black lace-up boots, were up on the dressing table as she sat listening to The Ultimate Chick-Flick Album in the World Ever on her portable stereo, and reading Heat magazine with an almost religious intensity.

  “Hey, Maxine!” said Stephen chirpily. “Did you hear about all the excitement?”

  “Excite me,” mumbled Maxine.

  “Number Twelve has only just arrived. A couple more minutes and I’d have been on.”

  “Oh, yeah?” said Maxine, wholly consumed by an article about which actresses wore thongs, which favored big pants. “Why was he late, then?”

  “Don’t know—trouble in paradise, apparently.”

  “Really?” Maxine said, dragging her gaze up from the magazine. Nothing illuminated Maxine’s life quite like marital discord, especially if it involved someone she knew, or someone famous, or ideally both. “What did he say?”

  “Not much, but he didn’t get here till five minutes ago. Strictly speaking, according to Equity rules, I could have gone on.”

  “Yeah, I’d have loved to see you tell him that, Steve. ‘Sorry, Josh, d’you mind sitting this one out…’ ”

  “Still—one day, eh, Maxy? One day it’ll be our turn.”

  Maxine snuffled and turned the page. Clearly, she hated it when he lumped the two of them together. For one thing, she was actually visible on stage, and spoke, and moved around, and did some proper acting with Josh each night, in a number of small but significant roles. She appeared in silhouette in an upstage doorway as Byron’s beloved half-sister, Augusta Leigh, and when Byron recited, “She Walks in Beauty, Like the Night…,” it was Maxine’s job to actually walk, in beauty, like the night. Of course, the role of “Venetian Whore” consisted primarily of lying partially naked on a four-poster bed while Lord Byron wrote Don Juan using her buttocks as a desk, but at least people noticed her; you could hear them, the men, shifting in their seats, sitting upright. She had lines too, in jabbering Italian, largely for comic effect, but, still, a speaking part was a speaking part. On the poster outside, she got an “…and introducing…” credit. Yes, Maxine Cole was One to Watch, she was an Exciting Fresh Young Talent, she was the Girl from the Jalapeño-Cheese Tortilla Chip Commercial (“To dip or not to dip—that is the question”). Stephen, on the other hand, was a Good Company Member—not a bad thing in itself, but no more remarkable than a Safe Pair of Hands, a Reliable Little Run-around, a Comfy Pair of Shoes.

  That loudspeaker crackled and buzzed. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your five-minute call. Five minutes, please,” and Maxine started rubbing expensive skin lotion into her long, creosote-tanned legs. It was a little like watching someone lovingly oil a gun, and Stephen discreetly turned and trudged up the rest of the stairs to his dressing room, at the very top.

  Olivier, Richardson, Gielgud, Guinness, Burton had all climbed these stairs at one time or another, and the tiny dressing room to which Stephen now ascended marked the location of what had once been Dame Peggy Ashcroft’s shoe cupboard. The smell of the greasepaint and the roar of the crowd never really permeated this far from the stage. Instead the roar came from the boiler in the roof, and the smell was of cigarettes, old newspapers, decaying carpet underlay; that charity-shop smell. Stephen flopped in the tattered office chair in front of his mirror, a mirror that, mockingly, actually was surrounded by lightbulbs. Only about a third of them were working, and the only other source of light was a murky skylight, now black from soot and pigeon shit, giving the room a subterranean atmosphere, despite being in a turret at the very top of the building. He turned the lights on, licked a cotton-wool pad, and tried to remove the last of the corpse makeup, leaving little wisps of cotton attached to the two-days’ stubble. Then he lit a cigarette and sat for a while, looking in the mirror, examining his face; not out of any kind of vanity, but as a kind of professional obligation, like a truck driver checking the tread on balding tires, wondering if he can get away with it.

  It wasn’t that it was a bad face as such—he had, after all, been cast as an Emergency Byron—but it had a soft, neutral, hard-to-recall quality, a milky blankness that made him much in demand for crime reconstructions and corporate-training films, but little else, the kind of unremarkable pleasantness that rendered him invisible to bartenders, bus drivers and casting directors. In the unlikely event of a movie being made of his life, he would perhaps be played by a young Tom Courtenay or, if the action were transposed to America, someone like the young Jack Lemmon, someone with that Everyman quality. Of course, the best person for the role of Stephen C. McQueen would be Stephen C. McQueen himself, but it was unlikely that his agent would be able to get him an audition, or that he wouldn’t play himself badly. That was, after all, what he had been doing for some years now.

  As for his supposed resemblance to the star of the show, the best that could be said was that he looked like a smudged Polaroid of Josh Harper. A smudged, black-and-white Polaroid of a slightly older, plumper Josh Harper. The haircut that made Josh look like a Renaissance prince (and might perhaps even be called that—“I’d like a ‘Renaissance Prince,’ please”) somehow contrived to make Stephen look like the keyboard player in a provincial British eighties soft-metal band. His nose was a little too big, his eyes a little too small, his skin a little too pale, and it was the combination of all these small deficiencies that pushed it into ordinariness, invisibility. Only a mother, or his agent, perhaps, would call it truly handsome. Stephen frowned, drew on the cigarette, and ruffled his own “Renaissance Prince” with both hands, looking forward to the day, in just eight weeks’ time, when he could cut the bloody thing off.

  Over the loudspeaker came the low rumble of Donna’s voice. “Beginners, please. Mr. Harper, this is your beginner’s call.”

  Stephen stretched and turned the loudspeaker down. Not tonight then. No Big Break tonight. Probably just as well; he wasn’t really feeling up to a Big Break. He put his fingers on his neck, felt the glands in his neck, gathered saliva in his mouth, then swallowed. Maybe he was getting ill. He curled his tongue over in an attempt to probe the back of his throat. Tonsillitis, it felt like. He put the plastic kettle on to boil, tipped three spoons of instant coffee into a chipped mug, and ate a biscuit.

  On the loudspeaker, he could hear the murmur of the audience subside, as the lights went down and the sound of the music began—a synthesized string quartet playing pastiche Haydn. He sat and listened for a while, alternating biscuit and cigarette, mouthing along to the lines with Josh, marking out the moves and gestures.

  The curtain rises to find Lord Byron sitting at a desk, scribbling away with a quill by the light of a candelabra. Slowly, he becomes aware of the audience’s presence—he scans the auditorium at his leisure, smiles, speaks in a self-mocking drawl.

  LORD BYRON

  Mad, bad and dangerous to know!

  (He smiles wryly)

  That is what they call me in England now, or so I am told. And it is, I must confess, a reputation that I have done little to assuage.

  (He places the quill down, picks up the candelabra, crosses center stage, limping slightly on his clubfoot

  (left), and surveys the audience)

  Like all reputations it is simultaneously accurate, yet fanciful. Perhaps you would care for another point of view? ’Twill take but ninety minutes of your time…

  (He smiles once more, a slow, knowing grin)

  Or then again, perhap
s not. Perhaps you actually prefer the legend to the truth! Truly, I would not blame you. It is only human nature, after all…

  I was born in the year of Our Lord 1788…

  …And it was usually at this point in the play that a profound and stultifying boredom kicked in.

  Stephen reached up to the volume knob on the loudspeaker; like the telescreens in 1984, you could never turn it off completely, but it was possible to at least get Josh’s voice down to a low tinnitus murmur. He sat and read for a while, then at 8:48 precisely, exactly as he’d done ninety-six times before, and as he would do another forty-eight times more, Stephen wriggled into the opaque black wool and Lycra body stocking that he wore for his onstage role of Ghostly Figure. Very few men, perhaps not even Josh Harper, can carry off the opaque black body stocking with any great style or élan. Stephen looked like a long-dead mime, and freshly depressed, he quickly pulled the heavy black cloak over his shoulders, grabbed the white Venetian face mask and tricorn hat, and headed down the treacherous back staircase that led to stage left.

  Onstage, Byron was approaching his tragically premature death, of a fever caught while nobly aiding the cause of Greek independence, and Stephen watched as Josh reenacted Byron’s illness taking hold. He was certainly coughing up a storm tonight. But was he any good? He was, it had to be admitted, almost supernaturally handsome—a poster face, the kind that looks equally at home protruding from a suit of armor, or a toga, or a space suit; feminine without being effeminate, masculine without being coarse, but with something cruel about it too, something hard about the eyes and mouth, the kind of face that could play a romantic lead or a strangely appealing Nazi. Onstage, Lord Byron solemnly intoned, “We’ll Go No More A-roving,” and Stephen watched with an uncomfortable but all-too-familiar mix of professional admiration, and a low, dull throb of envy in the pit of his stomach.

  Then the red light in the wings changed to green, his cue to enter, and Stephen rolled his shoulders, cleared his throat and stepped out onto the stage. There was a time when walking onstage in front of a theater full of people might have given him a little thrill, but, frankly, this late into a long run, there was more adrenaline in trying to cross Shaftesbury Avenue. Besides, the lighting was deliberately murky, there was a lot of dry ice, he was a very, very long way upstage, and he was wearing a full face mask. Still, if a job’s worth doing…

  Think ghostly, he told himself. My motivation is to open the door in a ghostly manner.

  He did so, then made a deep, somber bow as Josh turned and walked past him, his eyes fixed straight ahead.

  Now close the door, but not too fast, he thought, and slowly closed the door. He stood perfectly still as the stage lights faded on a slow ten count, then as soon as the applause began, turned and walked swiftly offstage, so as not to get in Josh’s way. And that was it—walk on (ghostly), open door (slowly), bow (somberly), close door (slowly), walk off (quickly). Room for interpretation was slight. An old theatrical saying has it that there is no such thing as a small part. This was that small part.

  As always Josh Harper was waiting in the wings, eyes wide with elation, grinning and sweating like an action hero.

  “Hey, Stevearoony, mate,” he shouted above the roar of the audience, dropping into his natural voice, a soft, semiauthentic cockney. This was another of Josh’s not entirely endearing qualities—a congenital inability to call anyone by their chosen name, so that Donna became “The Madonnster,” Michael the DSM became “Mickey the Big D,” Maxine was “Maximillius.” At some point Stephen had been designated “Stevearoony,” “The Stevester,” “Bullitt” or, perhaps most annoying of all, “Stephanie.” There seemed every possibility that if Josh were to meet, say, the Dalai Lama or Nelson Mandela, that he would address them as the Dalaroony Lamster and Nelsony Mandoly. And they probably wouldn’t mind.

  “…really sorry about getting your hopes up earlier, Steve. You know, about going on.”

  “Oh, that’s okay, Josh. Nature of the job…”

  “More! More! Encore!” shouted the audience. Maxine was onstage, taking a token solo bow, but it was Josh they were screaming for.

  “No, it’s not okay, Steve, it’s fuckin’ unforgivable, and unprofessional too.” He grabbed Stephen tight by the shoulder. “Listen, just to make it up to you, what are you doing Sunday night?”

  “Nothing. Why?”

  “It’s just I’m having this big party, and I wondered if you were available?”

  “More! More! Bravo!”

  “Bear with us a sec, will you?” Josh sighed, then almost reluctantly, as if bowing to rapturous applause were a chore, like taking the bins out, he turned, executed a gymnastic little hop-and-skip and scampered from the wings back out into the burning white light of the stage. Stephen watched as Josh flopped forward from the waist, and hung there, head and hands dangling limply to the floor, as if to emphasize just how completely and utterly ex-haust-ing the whole damn thing had been. But Stephen’s mind was elsewhere. A party. Josh Harper’s party. A famous person’s party. He didn’t really approve of fame, of course, and consciously tried not to be influenced or impressed by it, but, still, a proper, genuine, fashionable party, full of successful, attractive, influential, beautiful people. And he’d been invited.

  “Bravo! More!” shouted the audience.

  Josh was back by his side. “Quite a big crowd, seven onwards—what d’you think? I’d really appreciate it…”

  “Sounds good to me, Josh.”

  “More, more, encore…” shouted the audience.

  “Goodly good, mate! I’ll text you my address,” and he simulated some dainty, two-thumbed texting on a little mimed mobile phone; another of his gifts—a prodigious and gifted mime, always conjuring objects out of thin air: a waggled pint, a finger-and-thumb phone, a ball kicked into the back of the net. “Oh, and it’s suit and tie, by the way! And don’t tell the others, Maxine or Donna or anyone else. I see enough of that lot as it is. Just our little secret, yeah?”

  I’m the only one he has invited, thought Stephen, glowing.

  “Sure, Josh, it’s our secret.”

  “Bravo! Encore! Encore…” The applause was starting to dip a little, but was still enthusiastic enough to justify another curtain call, if Josh could be bothered to take it.

  “What d’you reckon? Think I can squeeze one more out of them?” asked Josh, grinning.

  “Go for it!” said Stephen, now full of goodwill for his old pal. Josh turned and strolled slowly out onto the stage, wiping his forehead with the sleeve of his sweat-soaked puffy shirt, and the audience’s applause swelled once more as he stood at the front of the stage, looking around slowly, up into the gods and down at the stalls, applauding the audience back, thanking them, flattering them.

  Standing invisible in the wings, perspiring into his black unitard, Stephen C. McQueen looked down at his own hands and found, to his surprise, that he was applauding too.

  Kitchen-Sink Drama

  As a teenager, falling in love with old British movies of the fifties and sixties on telly, Stephen had always been fascinated by the notion of “the bedsit.” He liked to imagine himself, in black-and-white, as an Albert Finney type, living in shabby-romantic furnished rooms overlooking the railway lines at two shillings and sixpence a week, where he’d smoke Woodbines, listen to trad jazz and bang angrily at his typewriter, while Julie Christie padded around wearing one of his old shirts. That’s the life for me. One day—the teenage Stephen had thought, captivated—one day, I’ll have my very own bedsit, little suspecting that this was the only one of his fantasies that was destined to come true.

  The estate agents hadn’t actually called it a bedsit, of course. They called it a “studio,” implying that you could either live in it or record your new album there, the choice was yours. The “studio” was situated in a drab, nameless area between Battersea and Wandsworth, the kind of neighborhood where every lamppost is garlanded with a rusting bike frame. A small row of shops contained all the necessar
y local amenities: a Chinese take-away, an off-license, a laundry, a scurvy-inducing Warsaw Pact grocer’s called Price£avers, where a packet of Weetabix cost £3.92, and a terrifying pub, the Lady Macbeth, a floodlit maximum-security wing that had unaccountably been issued with a drinks license.

  Stephen’s epic journey home involved the tube to Victoria, changing at Green Park, an overland train to Clapham Junction, then a lurching bus and a brisk, nerve-jangling fifteen-minute walk, past Chicken Cottage, Chicken Village and World of Chicken’n’Ribs, then on to Idaho Fried Chicken, Idaho being the last remaining U.S. state to be granted its own south London fried-chicken franchise. There he ran the gauntlet of the feral children, who stood in the doorway and hailed his nightly return with hearty cries of “wanker/tosser/twat.” He unlocked the anonymous, flaking mustard-colored front door, and the smell of questionable fried poultry accompanied him up the narrow gray stairs.

  On the first-floor landing, he was pounced on by Mrs. Dollis, his neighbor, a tiny, aggressive elderly lady with a startling selection of random teeth, as if her gums had been pebble-dashed. She bobbed her head suddenly out from her doorway, turning the first-floor landing into Stephen’s own personal ghost train.

  “Foxes have been at the bins again,” she grumbled.

  “Have they, Mrs. Dollis?”

  “There’s chicken skin all over the floor. ’S disgusting.”

  “Well, isn’t that the shop’s responsibility?”

  “It’s not mine, that’s for sure.”

  “I’ll sort it in the morning, Mrs. Dollis, okay?”

  She groaned at this, as if Stephen had somehow been engaged in a secret program training foxes to get at the bins, then disappeared, and Stephen continued up the stairs to his flat. He double-locked the door, and lowered the aging blinds, slightly too small for the window, against the sodium glare of the streetlights outside.