The Understudy: A Novel (10 page)

“You did have a say, and we listened to it, and took a different view. Besides, what do you care? It’s not as if we’re asking you to
pay
for it!” Alison said this with only the trace of a sneer, but still enough of a sneer to make her now look ashamed. She turned and stared out of the window. Stephen could feel it looming between them—The Row. They were going to have The Row again, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Best to just get it over with.

“Meaning what?” he said.

“Nothing.”

“Meaning if I got a proper job…”

“No.”

“…if I stopped daydreaming, stopped wasting my time…”

“I didn’t say that, did I?”

“I’m not going to give up now, Alison.”

“I know! And I didn’t ask you to. You’re free now, you can do what you want. I just sometimes think you might be happier…”

“…if I just gave up?”

“Yes, fuck it! Give up! Sell out! Surrender! Join the real world!”

“And is this Alison the recruitment consultant speaking?”

“No, it’s Alison your
friend
. You’re capable of so much more, Stephen.”

“That’s not the point. It’s like the other day, Josh almost didn’t turn up for the show. I was actually in the wings in his costume, more or less. Two more, one more, minute, and I’d have been onstage, playing the lead role.”

“You are
never
going to play the lead role, Stephen. These sudden, amazing reversals of fortune, they
never
happen. Most people learn this stuff just from living—why is it taking you so long?”

“But it
does
happen; it happens all the time!”

“Not to you, Stephen, those things never happen to
you
. And even if they did, what then?”

“Well—it would be a break, wouldn’t it? A change, an opportunity to show what I can do, the start of something…”

“And this lucky break, what if it never, ever comes? What if you wait and wait and wait, and nothing happens, and you end up with nothing?”

“That’s not going to happen…”

“…You can’t build your life on the possibility that Josh Harper’s going to get struck by lightning, it’s just not realistic.”

“Okay, maybe not, but you know what it’s like in this business. There are loads of actors whose careers don’t take off until they’re much older.”

“Yes, but like
who,
Stephen?”

He remembered the Han Solo figure in his pocket. “Harrison Ford didn’t make it till he was thirty-six!” And even as the words left his mouth he realized it was not the right thing to say. Maybe she’d pretend she hadn’t heard it.

“Oh, for crying out loud…”

“What?”

“You’re
not
Harrison Ford…”

“I know! That’s not what I meant.”

“…and you don’t live in the Hollywood Hills, Steve, you live in Battersea borders.”

“I know that! I’m just saying…” Stephen paused, just for a second. Aware that his argument was crumbling, he decided to do the only sensible, mature thing, and create an elaborate, unsustainable lie. “Look, if you must know, I’m waiting to hear about something right now, as a matter of fact. Something big.”

“What?”

“A…movie. The lead. The lead role in a movie.”

“The lead role in a movie?”

“Uh-huh. A big-budget American thing. Romantic comedy. I can’t say too much about it at this stage. But it’s a big role. The title role, in fact.”

Alison narrowed her eyes, and shook her head skeptically. “The title role?”

“Uh-huh. The title role.”

“And what’s it called?”

“It’s called…can’t remember.”

“You can’t remember the title?”

Impro! Think of a name, just any simple name, any plausible-sounding man’s name…

“
It’s called
John…Johnson. Johnny Johnson
.”

“Johnny Johnson…”

“It’s a working title.”

“I see. And why you?”

“What d’you mean, why me?”

“I mean, why cast you? Why not cast, I don’t know, Josh Harper or someone?”

“They want a fresh face.”

“A
fresh
face?”

“An unfamiliar face.”

Skeptically, she examined Stephen’s unfamiliar face. “And it’s a
romantic comedy
, you say?”

“Not
so
hard to believe, is it?”

“The comedy I can see, but the romance…”

“Alison…”

“So what’s it about then, this ‘romantic comedy’?”

“You know, the usual. Transatlantic, culture-clash thing. It’s about this English guy who falls in love with a feisty American woman.” He was warming to his subject now, growing into the lie, casting the female role in his head, even visualizing individual scenes, the cute meet, the first kiss, but Alison still looked skeptical. “It’s much better than it sounds. Like I said, I can’t really say too much at this stage. I don’t want to jinx it.”

“So you haven’t
got
the part?”

“Not…definitely,” he said, fumbling behind him for an escape route.

Alison sniffed, turned her back. “Oh, I see…”

“But I’m heavy-penciled!”

Alison spun around to face him. “Stephen, you’ve been bloody heavy-penciled all your life!”

“Hello, there…?” asked Colin, sliding into the room as if on casters.

“For Christ’s sake, Colin!” snapped Alison, deploying the Yorkshire accent. “We’re having a
private
conversation.”

“I realize that. I just wondered if maybe you could keep your voices down a little, that’s all,” and he nodded toward the door.

At the end of the hallway, now dressed in a yellow vinyl mackintosh and carrying a small rucksack tightly in her hand, Sophie stood patiently, staring intently at the floor, as if by not looking up she might prevent herself from hearing.

“Just coming, sweetheart,” Stephen shouted down the hall in his best cheery voice. Then he took a deep breath and attempted a smile at Alison, who was biting her thumbnail. She raised one hand back. Then as quickly as he could, he squeezed past Colin in the doorway, took Sophie by the hand and left the house.

A Madcap Life Force

“I
l pleut,”
said Sophie.

“Il pleut,”
repeated Stephen.

Sophie had only ever seen her father’s flat once. The visit had not been a success for either of them. Sophie had come round on a rainy Saturday afternoon, and together they had played a brutally melancholic game of
Cluedo
that had been scarcely less distressing than witnessing a real-life murder, in the study, with a candlestick. The visit had come during a particularly dark time in the divorce process, the daytime-drinking months, his Miss Havisham period, and even now he would shiver at the possibility that he might be guilty of having scared his own daughter. Certainly, Sophie must have said something to Alison, because shortly afterward it had been diplomatically suggested that maybe they’d like to go on “day trips” instead. He had reluctantly decided not to push for further overnight visits, at least not until he’d brought some sense of order to his life.

Consequently, today they found themselves walking hand in hand down Richmond High Street on a Monday morning in light drizzle, looking for somewhere they could drink soft drinks and talk until the cinema opened. These outings weren’t uncomfortable as such, but Stephen’s delight at seeing his daughter was always tempered by a vague feeling of restlessness and displacement. It was as if they’d lost their keys, and were waiting for someone to come home and let them in.

“Il neige,”
said Sophie.

“What’s that, then?”

“It’s snowing.”

“Il neige?”

“Il neige.”

“Il neige.”

“Très bon. Très, très bon, mon père.”

“Merci beaucoup, mon chérie.”

“It’s ‘
ma,
’ not ‘
mon.
’ Girls are feminine, remember?”

“God—vaguely.”

They walked past Burger King. Stephen was aware that Colin violently disapproved of Sophie eating fast food, and while usually this would have been recommendation enough, Stephen found the combination of strip-lighting and urban grooves too bruising for his present state.

“So—where shall we go, then?” he asked Sophie.

“Don’t mind.”

“Well, what do you feel like eating?”

“I like sushi,” said Sophie, showing off.

“You don’t like sushi.”

“Yes I do,” she said, but without much conviction.

“You’re meant to be a
child,
Sophie; children don’t like sushi. Not even Japanese children.”

“Well,
I
do. Sushi
and
sashimi.”

“So when did you have sushi, then?”

“In Waitrose yesterday. Colin gave me some of his.”
Typical bloody Colin,
he thought;
dangling raw tuna from his fat pink fingers into my daughter’s mouth in Waitrose, explaining what wasabi is, making her taste a little, laughing when she pulls a face.

“What did Colin give you, then?” he said, struggling to maintain a neutral tone.

“I told you—sushi. It’s raw fish on rice, whereas sashimi—”

“I know what it is, Madame Butterfly. I meant, what
kind
of fish was it?”

“Don’t know, just pink fish.”

“Well, we’re not having sushi, I’m afraid. I’m exercising some parental authority.”

“ ’S okay. I didn’t like it that much anyway.”

“No, me neither. Bleeeeeuch, raw fish,” he said, pulling a disgusted face, and they walked a little farther down the High Street, seeing who could pull the most disgusted face, and make the most disgusted noise, Sophie hanging off his elbow with her whole body weight, and for a moment Stephen felt as if he’d won a little victory over Colin, and big houses on Barnes Common, and sushi for the under-eights.

As usual, they ended in Pizza Express, with all the others. While Sophie told a long and complicated story that he didn’t understand about a friend from school he’d never heard of, Stephen debated whether he should order any wine. He badly needed something to take the edge off last night’s hangover, but he didn’t want Sophie to think he was drinking again, or smoking either. He imagined the cross-examination when she got home. “And what did Daddy have for lunch, Sophie?” “Daddy had a bottle of wine and twenty Marlboro Reds.” It wasn’t that he was exactly fearful of his daughter—though she did seem an unnaturally shrewd, serious and intimidating little girl, more so since she’d started going to that new school—it was just that her behavior bore no relation to Stephen’s own memories of childhood. He would have been more than happy for her to get food on her clothes, to eat ketchup from the packet, to turn her nose up at anything green. But instead she sat upright in her chair, gave her own vegetarian order to the waitress, clearly and confidently and with a little polite thank-you-very-much smile, unfolded her napkin carefully and placed it neatly on her lap. She sliced her pizza into trigonometrically precise one-twelfth wedges, chewed it methodically, pronounced it “excellent.” She behaved with such easy sophistication and self-confidence that if Stephen had been bold enough to order a bottle of wine, the waitress would probably have asked Sophie to taste it. It was like going on an outing with an ambassador to the UN.

“So how are you doing at this posh new school then, Sophs?”

“Oh, okay. I’m good at art and writing, but my maths is a bit below par.”

A bit below
what
? A golfing term. One of Colin’s golfing terms. “I shouldn’t worry, Sophs, I was always rubbish at maths too,” he said, trying to strike up some kind of allegiance.

“I didn’t say I was
rubbish
at it. I’m just not fulfilling my potential, that’s all,” corrected Sophie. Stephen’s hand went instinctively to his cigarettes, nestling in his pocket next to Han Solo.

“How about sport? D’you like sport?”

“ ’S okay. I like hockey, but I find netball banal.”

“You find netball
what
?”

“Banal. It means—”

“I know what banal means, Soph. What about the piano? How’s your piano coming along?”

“Piano’s booooooring,” she said.
Well, thank God,
thought Stephen,
a normal response. Still, better toe the line.

“Yeah, well, it’s boring now, but you’ll be glad of it when you’re older.” My God, not the you’ll-be-glad-when-you’re-older speech—sometimes he bored himself, really he did. “I used to have piano lessons, and I always wish I’d kept it up.”

“What’s a heavy pencil?” said Sophie, suddenly.

Stephen stopped chewing. “Where did you get that?”

“When you were talking to Mum. You said you were heavy-penciled, and she said you were
always
heavy-penciled. Except she swore.”

“Heavy-penciled means…that was a private conversation, Soph.”

“Why were you shouting, then?”

“It means that I
might
have got a job. In a movie.”

“And when’s it coming out?” she said, her eyes wide.

“What?”

“The movie, the one you’re heavy-penciled for?”

A deep sense of unease rose in him. It was one thing to lie to your ex-wife, out of self-defense, but there was something unforgivable about repeating the fib, the lie, to your daughter. He opened his mouth, closed it, leaned forward in his seat. “Look, this movie, it’s not definite, it’s a possibility, a very, very slight possibility. It’s best if you just forget about it, okay?”

“What kind of film is it anyway?”

Well, Sophie, it’s a nonexistent one…

“
It’s a…a romantic comedy.”

“What’s one of those?”

“A romantic comedy is a story where one person’s unhappy, and then they meet and fall in love with another unhappy person, but they can’t get together and be happy because of the obstacles—”

“What obstacles?”

“I don’t know—she’s married to some big film star or something. Anyway, there’s lots of obstacles in their way, but in the end they overcome the obstacles and become boyfriend and girlfriend and everyone’s happy.”

“And is that what happens in your film?”

“It’s not
my
film, Sophie. I probably haven’t even got the part. I almost certainly haven’t got it. In fact, let’s forget about it…”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

“Please, let’s forget about the film, eh, Sophie?”

“Not in the film. In real life.”

Stephen touched the cigarette packet longingly with the tips of his fingers.

“Why d’you want to know?”

“No reason. I am just making conversation.”

“Why, has your mum said something to you?” he asked, but the words came out wrong, and he sounded a little more bad-tempered than he’d intended.

“Noooo,” she said defensively, with an upward inflection.

“So why’s everyone so interested all of a sudden?”

Sophie said nothing.

“Well, the answer is no, I haven’t got a girlfriend, not in the film, and not in real life, all right?” There was a moment’s awkward silence, the kind of awkward hiatus that really ought not to occur in a conversation with a child. Sophie filled it by taking a drink from her glass, even though the juice was long gone. The ice cubes rattled noisily against her lip.

“I only asked a question,” she added, finally.

“I know, I know, Sophs…” He reached across, tucked her hair back behind her ear, and kept his hand on the back of her neck. Did he imagine it, or did she stiffen a little? Why did this always happen? he wondered. Sophie was the only unambiguously good thing he’d ever achieved, and he wanted very much to cast himself as a madcap life force, an irreverent, impoverished but lovably eccentric alternative to her boorish, mirthless stepfather. He wanted to be larger than life, even if in reality he felt slightly smaller. Clearly, Sophie was not convinced; she could sense the strain. The performance wasn’t working. He took his hand away from her head.

“I don’t mind what you ask me, Sophs. You can ask me anything you want. It’s just it’s quite a personal question, that’s all. I mean, have
you
got a boyfriend?”

“No-oooo. But that’s not the same.”

“Why isn’t it the same?”

“Well,” she said, slowly, in her parental tone, “mainly because I’m only seven years old.”

And Stephen had to admit, it was a fair point.