But I couldn’t move; not enough to get out of the apartment. All at once I felt furious with Trevor, and with myself. I managed to get to my feet, pull his postcards out of my suitcase and stuff them into the garbage bin. I squashed them down with my foot, mashing them amongst the damp tea bags and lettuce leaves. ‘Pissed,’ I read. ‘Sassenack.’ The stupid bastard couldn’t even spell.
Good fucking riddance, I thought, gazing at the chrome bin.
Lila had had a baby! Though the rest of us seemed to have died, one damaged grown-up was still alive. She had only been born to the world that afternoon. I wondered if Lila had told Trev about her existence. Maybe even they weren’t that close.
Maybe they were. Who knew, now? It wasn’t my business to ask. I lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Suddenly I felt weak with guilt. It was as if the mist had cleared, just for a minute, and revealed the forbidden vista. I knew I shouldn’t let her be punished, that I should go to the police and confess, before it was too late.
But that seemed such a melodramatic and utterly bizarre thing to do. As unhinged as a naked man punching the air. It simply seemed impossible. I would have to look up Precinct Station in the phone book – was that how they were listed? Find the nearest one, go there and ask for somebody. Who? And then blurt out my unbelievable story, like some pathetic fan, gatecrashing. Trying to muscle in on my heroine’s notoriety. Trying, pitifully, to be her stand-in for real.
It all seemed far more ridiculous than Lila being tried for murder. She’s just a disturbed child, Rodney had said, and now I could see why. It all made sense, now. Far more sense than the blurred and confused events of a certain night in April, when a towelling mannequin sat slumped in a chair and refused to rise to its feet.
Roly came round that evening. I wished he hadn’t. I hated him coming to my apartment, it made me feel exposed.
‘Sure you’re OK, sweetheart?’ he kept asking. ‘You look terrible.’
‘I’m fine,’ I said, and gave him a slice of wholewheat apple pie.
‘It doesn’t look good,’ he said. ‘She hasn’t got a hope in hell of winning this case. What’s the defence got? Lack of motive. That’s all they got. What else? You know what else? Lila says she didn’t do it.’ He threw up his hands. ‘They got an actress, protesting her goddam innocence! She makes her goddam career telling lies!’
That night I lay awake, sweating. I told myself: movie stars don’t go to prison. People like me did. Ordinary people. Lila was immune. She was enveloped in her own protective wrapping. People sensed it wherever she went. They swung round, to watch her. In traffic snarl-ups I kept close to a white Rolls-Royce because I knew it would find a way through. It drew me behind it like a magnet. Normal rules didn’t apply to film stars. That was the point of them. They were magic.
Those children knew that, the summer before. They had all run away to catch a glimpse of Lila. They had deserted me, in my spurious Oxfam glamour. They didn’t want my pretend fairy story, they wanted the real thing. Just as I did. And fairy stories always ended happily. That was the point.
Lila’s attorney, Ralph Kahn, tried to persuade her to change her plea. He wanted to turn the whole thing around and go with the prosecution evidence. He urged her to change her plea to guilty of manslaughter, whilst of an unsound mind.
But she refused. ‘Her mind’s fouled up,’ Roly told me, on the phone. ‘We know she did it, she seems to know sometimes. Least, she’s all confused. She woke up that morning and it was like she’d gone out. Her fur on the floor, all that. See, she hasn’t got the mental stamina for what she’s going through. The questions, the stuff about her daughter. The courtroom, the shock. If you’re not cracking up by the beginning, you’ll sure be cracking up by the end. That’s what the process does to you.’
On the ninth day Lila took the stand. The entire city ground to a halt. That’s what it seemed. There was a hush, down in the street. The air felt heavy with thunder. People had been queuing since dawn for seats in the court; the WCBS News that morning showed the crowd snaking down the steps.
I had stomach cramps. They gripped me, waves of them. Sometimes they were so painful that I yelped, as if I were in labour. Then they subsided for a few minutes before they renewed their attack.
I drank herb tea, the cup clattering when I lowered it onto the saucer. I switched on the TV and watched Lila being sworn in. She wore a white blouse. No jewellery; nothing. Her hair was pulled back from her pale face. She looked as if she had shrunk; she looked terribly nervous.
Rubitsky looked refreshed and urbane that morning. I could almost smell his cologne. Strolling to and fro, he questioned her about her relationship with Trevor, and whether there was any truth in the rumours that he was leaving her for another woman. She denied them, shaking her head. He asked her to describe the events of the evening of April 24th.
‘I took a couple of Mogadon,’ she said. Her voice was low and faltering. ‘Double-strength. I get them from my doctor. I went to bed.’
‘What time was this?’
‘Around nine-thirty.’
‘Nine-thirty,’ he said. He ambled across to the stenographer, and back again. He appeared to be in deep thought. Like any good performer he was playing the room – timing his pauses, milking his audience. All at once I realised that it was Rubinsky who was the actor today, not Lila.
‘Did you consume any alcohol?’ he asked.
‘No.’
‘You sure of that?’
‘I’ve quit,’ she said.
He paused, and looked around the room. So she’s quit, huh? You believe that? He turned to her. ‘So you went to bed and went straight to sleep?’
‘First I called Tee.’
‘Mr Parsons?’
She nodded. ‘I called him, to say goodnight.’
‘And what did you say?’
‘Just the usual things.’ She paused. ‘You know.’
‘What things?’
She looked across at him. ‘Just things. I wasn’t going to see him for a while. Not till the next evening.’ Her voice grew quieter. ‘It seemed like a long time, that’s all.’
‘And what did he say?’
She was silent for a moment. ‘The usual things,’ she said, at last.
‘Anything else?’
‘He said the odour of the paint was giving him a headache. Then we said goodnight and I went to sleep.’
Rubinsky stopped his pacing. ‘You went to sleep.’
She nodded.
‘And then what happened?’ he asked.
‘I woke up the next morning, at six-thirty.’
Rubinsky raised his thick eyebrows. ‘You didn’t leave your apartment, during the night?’
She shook her head.
‘Let me ask you again, Miss Dune. Take your time.’
‘I didn’t leave my apartment. Why should I?’
‘Please remember, you’re under oath.’
‘I was asleep!’
‘How do you account for the fact that the doorman of your building saw you leave at five after ten –’
‘He didn’t!’
‘That the doorman in Mr Parsons’s building saw you entering at 10.15 –’
‘I didn’t go there!’
‘These two men have sworn, under oath –’
‘I didn’t go!’ She stopped; she was shaking. ‘I wanted to go, but I didn’t.’
‘You wanted to go?’
‘I wanted to see him.’ She lowered her head; she spoke to the floor. ‘I missed him. A whole lot. I just wanted to see him. You ever felt that?’ She looked up. ‘But I didn’t go.’
Rubinsky asked them to show her State’s Exhibit 3, the gun. He asked her to identify it.
‘You recognise this?’
She nodded. ‘I guess so.’
‘Please, just say yes or no.’
‘Yes.’
‘Does it belong to you?’ he asked.
She nodded.
‘How do you account for the fact that this gun –
’
‘Why should I shoot him?’ she cried. ‘You think I’m crazy? I loved the guy! Why for fuck’s sake should I shoot him when I loved him? Maybe I’ve done some strange things but I’m not totally bananas! We loved each other, we were going to get married, I was going to have his baby –’
‘Miss Dune, you know that’s untrue –’
‘Nobody believes me! Why don’t you believe me?’ She stared at him, her face ravaged. It looked as if claws had been dragged down it. ‘Why should I shoot him? I just want him back!’ She burst into sobs, burying her face in her hands. ‘I want him to come back!’
They found her guilty. There was simply overwhelming evidence to prove that she did it, when under the influence of alcohol. Nobody had believed her testimony, though the News applauded what it called ‘the best performance of her career.’ Shame, it added, that she couldn’t have won the Oscar which had so far eluded her.
Prior to sentencing, the judge said, ‘There can’t be one law for the rich and another for the poor, but I’ll take into account the provocation and your mental condition at the time.’ He sent her down for eight to twenty-five years.
Three
AFTERWARDS I FELT curiously light, as if a poisonous growth within me had been removed. I felt released and airy. I roamed the streets, a free woman. Nobody could get me now. For months a monstrous foetus had been sucking the life from my veins. Now, after a difficult labour, it had been pronounced dead at birth.
I cancelled my plans to return to London. Instead, I fixed things on the phone. I decided to stay in New York, for I had nothing to fear now. I had some trouble sleeping at night and I had to dose myself with Mogadon. I had rather strange dreams. But I told myself it would all improve with time. Lila had been sent to the Women’s Correctional Facility at Bedford Hills to begin her sentence. It was all over.
Now I had been seen on The Best People – I had returned to the show for six more episodes – the job offers started coming in. My career looked set to gather some momentum. In a funny way I felt I was taking over from Lila, at BCM. A hundred rungs lower, but still taking over. Roly even put me up for a small part in a forthcoming movie which had been earmarked for Lila, though in her case, of course, it would have been called a cameo.
‘How’s your American accent, honey?’ asked Roly.
‘Terrific,’ I replied, smiling. ‘I could pass myself off as an American any day. Nobody would ever know.’
I didn’t get the part, in fact. I was relieved; it would have been creepy, wouldn’t it? But I was on my way up, no doubt about it.
And then, one day in November, I had a call. Would I like to appear on the Marv Winfield Show?
I had no idea what they were talking about. Probably you don’t either. Marv Winfield was a short-lived, networked chat show created to dent the Carson ratings, a feat it failed to achieve during its brief run. This was principally due to its host. Apparently Winfield was a celebrated ex-football player, but his talents didn’t extend to dynamic conversation.
Roly advised me to accept; it was good publicity. So I agreed.
It’s a strange thing, about fate. Hindsight tells us we felt uneasy that morning; we had intimations. We try, this way, to make sense of the dizzying and random universe. But that day, when I went out into the hushed street in my silver Cinderella dress, I had no intimation that my life would change. The chance whim of the Sexbusters location manager, the chance blow from that unknown stand-in’s husband which took her off the picture and changed my life – like the Titanic, I sailed gaily into the dark; I had no premonitions of the gathering forces of coincidence.
I felt nothing, the morning of the show. I felt nervous, of course, but I simply put it down to stage fright. The show was being taped in the morning and transmitted the following evening. I had no idea that events were already being set in motion, the invisible countdown beginning.
My fellow guests were a black multiple-rape victim called Macey and a man who imported New York’s latest status pet, Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs. He said they were hygienic and affectionate. During the break he was hustled off, carrying a struggling piglet, and I took his place. The audience clapped. I wore a new silk jacket and slacks, and high heels. I sat down on a beige leather sofa whilst somebody dropped a mike down my blouse and Marv Winfield beamed at me. He was a large, amiable man and I had already been primed on the subject of our conversation: the Brits in Hollywood. I felt perfectly safe.
The cameras started rolling. We chatted about the soaps, and the success of Joan Collins and Stephanie Beacham.
‘Would you consider yourself a glamorous person, Jules?’ he asked.
I shook my head. ‘I just consider myself an actress.’
‘You’ve achieved great success in The Best People; how did you start your career?’
I told him about my early days at RADA, and my various stage roles, omitting to mention their obscure venues. We all create personas for ourselves, in front of an audience. Their presence and their rustling reactions shape us. I found the old Jules emerging – a dedicated, socially aware actress who struggled against Thatcher philistinism, devoting herself to her craft. Getting into my stride, I babbled on about community theatre and multi-cultural workshops.
‘I did a lot of work with disturbed children,’ I said. ‘That gave me a wonderful training for working with Hollywood directors.’
The audience broke into laughter. Ah, music to my ears! I was starting to enjoy myself. I lifted my hand. ‘Look – here’s the scar where one of the kids bit me. Must have been a budding critic.’ The laughter grew. ‘The next Frank Rich.’
Winfield consulted his notes. ‘You came here at first, I believe, as Lila Dune’s stand-in,’ he said.
I tensed. ‘Yes.’
He grinned. ‘How about telling us something about her?’
I shrugged. ‘We hardly spoke a word. Stand-ins are nobodies. They’re just gofers. She just got me to buy her cigarettes.’
Thank God our time was up. He wished me best luck in the future.
A limo drove me home. I took the elevator up to my almost-penthouse on the 24th floor. I thought: next stop, Central Park West. My skin tingled from the TV lights. The question about Lila had given me a jolt but there was nothing to worry about. I didn’t even look like her any more.
I gazed at myself in the mirror. My hair was cut even shorter now, just to my ears. I had had it re-dyed chestnut. I gazed at my reflection. It had been a curious sensation, talking about my life in England. It had felt as if I were talking about some distant cousin of mine, who I hadn’t met for years. ‘You look like her long-lost cousin. The family swot.’
On impulse I went off that afternoon to a nail salon, down on 3rd Avenue, and had my hands done. Silk-wrap this time, like Lila. As I sat there, I thought of the show. I thought: a few words from me, and I could have sent their ratings through the roof. I closed my eyes and pictured the headlines. WINFIELD SENSATION! STAND-IN SLAYER CONFESSES!
‘You OK?’
I opened my eyes. An oriental face gazed at me, puzzled. It was the nail girl.
The next week, something unsettling happened. I had spent the night with Roly. Though extinguished during Lila’s trial, our sexual relationship had sluggishly revived. I blamed my lethargy on his overheated apartment, but he chose that night to talk.
‘You’ve gotten really weird,’ he said. ‘Know that?’ He was sitting, naked, on the end of the bed. His folds of fat reminded me of the piglet on the show.
‘There’s nothing wrong with me!’ I said.
‘Maybe you should go see somebody.’
I stared at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I know this guy – best in the business –’
‘There’s nothing the matter!’
‘That’s not what I hear,’ he said.
I froze. ‘Hear?’ I whispered. ‘From who?’
‘From you.’
I paused. ‘Me?’
‘At night.’ He gestured to the
other bedroom. ‘I’m in there, I can hear you.’
There was a silence. ‘What do you hear?’ I finally asked.
‘It’s like – someone’s pulling your guts out. I never heard anybody make a noise like that. I guess you’re crying.’
A few minutes later, I left. No more sleepovers with him. I took a cab downtown, back to my place. I hurried across the lobby and took the elevator up to my apartment. I remember looking at my watch. It was 10.30.
The moment I stepped through the door I knew that somebody had been there. The air smelt different. It was the scent of another human being.
I stood there, unable to move. I stared at the dark shapes of the furniture. I heard my stomach rumbling with fear; it was startlingly loud. Then I switched on the light.
I searched the apartment. There was nobody hiding. Nothing appeared to be stolen – the video and stereo were still there. But somebody had visited. Things had been rearranged. One of the desk drawers was half-open; in the closet my luggage had been re-stacked in a different order.
Somebody had tried to burgle me. That’s what I thought, at the time. But if I had disturbed them, how come I hadn’t bumped into them, leaving? How had they known I was coming home? And if they had broken in, why wasn’t the door-lock damaged?
Maybe my landlords had come back from Europe. They had arranged to be away for six months but maybe they had returned home early, and had dropped in to collect something.
None of it made sense. Not then.
Four
I HAD LANDED a small part in a thriller, which was just starting shooting in New York. It was five days’ work; I was to play an English physiotherapist who nurses the hero back to mobility after the Mafia had tried to kill him.
The Thursday after the break-in, November 23rd, I had a call from Roly. I presumed it was about this job, which I was due to start in a couple of days. But I was wrong.
‘Sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I went up to Bedford Hills today, to visit Lila. She asked me to pass on a message.’
There was a silence.
Finally he said, ‘You there?’
The Stand-In Page 38