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CHAPTER FIVE
At 1.50 p.m., I am sat on a wooden bench outside The Lansdowne having a single vodka on the rocks and sucking on Smints. At the table next to me, a couple are enjoying a relaxed alfresco pub lunch. I can smell pork belly. Did you know, Cameron Diaz stopped eating pig when she read an article that swine have a mental capacity similar to a three-year-old child, and can master very basic maths?
Since I have been here only two cars have gone past: a retro convertible of some sort and a vintage Jaguar. There is no noise bar the gentle burr of conversation and laughter emanating from the pub. This is typical Primrose Hill. It came as no surprise when Barb told me that Maximilian lived here. If a bomb was dropped on this villagey part of North London it would decimate the British film-making community. Richard Curtis would literally have no one left to star in his heart-warming ensemble pieces except possibly Emma Thompson, who no doubt would survive the explosion thanks to her British fighting spirit and thick helmet of hair. Bayswater – where Adele and I live – is hardly slumming it, but Primrose Hill has an air of effortless sophistication and moneyed calm. Luvvies love it.
The couple next to me finish their main courses and ask for a dessert menu. It looks extensive … and gooey. I am pulling a pack of cigarettes out of my bag when a black people carrier draws up on the pavement. The electric window whirs open and I immediately recognise Barb Silver in the back seat wearing her bug-eyed sunglasses and trademark vampiric blood-red lipstick. The PR mogul looks no different to how she did back when she was directing movies. When I was at drama school, I remember an interview with her in an industry magazine where she said, Most freakin’ film stars aren’t actors, they’re simply professional narcissists … She is gripping an iPad and shouting into a BlackBerry.
‘Problems? Maxy’s problems are over, for sure. You know you can trust me, JP, we’ve got history. I wouldn’t be telling you the kid was ready if he wasn’t.’ She pauses briefly. ‘He’s not a risk. Last night, last shmite! Minor hiccup, and you know it. He’s good to go. End of.’ But clearly it isn’t because then she adds, ‘Look elsewhere and you’ll regret it, big time – you’ll kill the franchise. Maxy is Jack Chase. Wait there …’ She pauses again, peers out of the window over the top of her sunglasses and squints at me. Her forehead doesn’t move. ‘Vivian?’ I nod. ‘Barb Silver. Get in the car, kiddo, and don’t you dare fire up that freakin’ death stick.’ She points at my packet of Marlboro Lights. ‘I haven’t spent forty thousand dollars on surgery to smell like a goddamn ashtray.’ She shuffles along the seat and gets back to her telephone conversation. ‘Don’t disappoint me, JP. Let’s nail this today.’
She hangs up as I get in the people carrier. Safe to say it is far more comfortable than Luke’s car, which is always knee deep in club flyers, plastic bottles and discarded snack packaging. This vehicle has a cream leather and walnut finish, pleasantly squidgy seats with television monitors on the back of each headrest and a selection of newspapers and film magazines fanned out on the back shelf. Actually, it’s far more comfy than Luke’s actual flat. As soon as I am sat, Barb hands me News Today open at Clint’s Big Column. STIR CRAZY FRY HITS ROOF AND DEFENCELESS WAITRESS! screams the headline.
‘That Parks is a cretin,’ she says. ‘He should get his facts straight.’
‘He’s not a cretin, but yeah, he should get his facts straight,’ I tell her. ‘Clint knows full well I am a hostess, not a waitress. There’s a big difference between the two. The waitress has to take the drink order, then the food one, deliver both to the table, check what condiments are required, continue to monitor the customer requirements throughout their meal, clear away the crockery, make coffee, organise the bill and prepare the table for the next set of diners. The hostess just watches.’ I laugh.
Barb snatches back the paper. ‘I wasn’t referring to your job title. I meant the way he’s making out my Maxy is madder than a box of frogs. We really don’t need this kind of bull at the moment.’
‘I thought any publicity was good publicity.’
‘Not these days, kiddo. The money guys are nervous about expensive over-runs and rescheduling. In the old days, a bit of chaos was part of the fun. When I worked on set I didn’t care what my leading man was doing – usually me, ha! – as long as he delivered. Everyone is so precious now. Which reminds me, you need to sign this before you see Maxy. It’s a confidentiality agreement … regulation procedure with the big stars. But I guess you’d know that,’ she smirks, ‘what with you being in the industry yourself.’
I cringe as she pulls out a document and a gold fountain pen from her red Hermès Birkin bag. As I’m signing, her BlackBerry buzzes and she checks the caller ID. I glance at it too. It says ‘Achilles’.
‘Woah, someone’s keen.’ She cackles satisfactorily but then zaps the call with a scarlet fingernail. ‘I’ll make him sweat, though. Some model I met last night,’ she explains. ‘I’ve got a good feeling about this one.’
‘Boyfriend material?’
‘Sheesh, no! I’ve got handbags older than him. The prognosis for relationship age gaps is never good in the entertainment industry … no matter how much the more mature party spends on cosmetic surgery. I mean look at Demi Moore. She looked younger than Ashton Kutcher by the time they hit their fifth wedding anniversary, but he still celebrated it in a Vegas hot tub with someone other than his wife.’ She cackles harder. ‘I meant I’ve got a positive hunch about the kid’s career.’
‘Is he an actor too, then?’
“Course he is, all models are actors. At least, they all think they could be. Trust me, if I had a dollar for every clothes horse I’ve screwed that wants to play a misunderstood junkie in some leftfield art-house movie opposite Chloe Sevigny I’d be a lot richer than I already am.’ She removes her shades and raises her eyebrows at me. Well, judging by the expression in her eyes I assume that’s what her brows would be doing if the surrounding area wasn’t paralysed with Botox. ‘Take us round the back, sugar …’ She taps the driver on his left shoulder. ‘There are paps outside the front gate.’
‘But you think this one does have talent, Barb?’ I ask.
‘From what I’ve seen so far? I reckon he’d be hard pushed to show grief at a funeral. But you know what, sometimes they don’t need any real ability for a crack at a screen career. Okay, so in shelf-life terms we’re not talking canned goods, but they can make a few dollars. Way more, if they really luck out. Enter stage left, Channing Tatum!’
‘Did Maximilian ever model?’
‘No goddamn way … Besides, he’s more than an actor.’ Her voice becomes serious. ‘He’s an artist. What he does is who he is.’
She inserts a piece of gum into her mouth and as she breaks it in we drive down a road lined with stucco-fronted five-storey white houses, then turn down a back street behind them and stop outside a wide iron gate. The driver jumps out of the car, enters a code into a security box and the gate swings open to reveal a decked garden full of exotic-looking flowers and a big lily-covered pond with its own fountain. Next to the pond is a giant bronze Buddha.
‘Just what this house needs,’ I deadpan. ‘A tranquil point of worship to help combat against the surrounding chaos and disorder of Primrose Hill.’
Barb smiles. ‘I bought Maxy that statue. Personally, religion gives me the willies. I used to sneak out of Sunday School and go to the flicks. But hey, if it provides him with a little tranquillity then I’m not going to argue.’ She turns to the driver. ‘I’m going back to The Dorchester in a couple of hours, so you might as well wait here.’ He nods and doffs his cap at her. ‘Payton, sugar, how many times do I have to tell you not to do that? I’m not the Duchess of goddamn Cornwall. Chill!’ She beckons to me. ‘Come with me, kiddo …’
I follow Barb as she stalks up a decked pathway, round the pond, across a flagstone patio and into the house through a set of French windows at the side. She glances at me over her shoulder.
‘So, this is my Maxy’s place …’
CHAPTER SIX
I immediately notice two things about ‘Maxy’s place’. Firstly, it looks like something out of the hardback book on hip hotels that Adele bought for the upstairs neighbours last Christmas; full of expensive design details like marble flooring, leather padded walls, giant neon crystal chandeliers and the odd piece of slightly risqué art – including a semi-nude photograph in the hallway of Zoe Dano, only her ridiculously long, lustrous, unassisted hair retaining her modesty. Secondly, it is spotless. Not in a quick-whip-round-with-some-antibacterial-spray-on-a-wet-cloth kind of way but clinically clean, like a hospital operating theatre. Every surface is bare and all the walls are painted white. As Barb guides me down the hallway into an immaculate kitchen with pristine stainless-steel worktops I get the impression that Maximilian Fry clearly feels that the home shouldn’t necessarily be where the heart is but more somewhere you could potentially transplant one.
‘Right,’ says Barb. ‘You stay here, kiddo. I’ll go and find him.’
She leaves the room, her heels clip-clopping across the marble. I walk over to the kitchen window and look out onto the garden. From this angle I can see an ivy gazebo sheltering a raised multicoloured platform where there is another Buddha on a podium. It is scattered with flower petals. That’s probably a meditation area. This thought makes me squirm a bit. There’s something rather embarrassing about celebrities who are seeking a higher meaning – especially those who wear a wristband to prove it. Luke was right. What a pretentious wanker.
‘Yeah, yeah, I know … I’m a pretentious wanker.’
I spin round. Standing in the doorway of the kitchen wearing a pair of worn grey tracksuit bottoms with a T-shirt tucked in the pocket and a white towel draped round his neck is … Maximilian Fry. Now, I had always thought he had shown potential – even as a ‘wolf-boy’ in The Orc’s Progress and badly wounded in Victim X – way before everyone fancied him as Jack Chase in The Simple Truth. But nothing could have prepared me for this … the live version. Like all actors he is smaller than he looks on film, probably no more than five foot ten-ish, but he is a lot broader and his features are much more intense. His eyes are a velvety brown. His cheekbones are sharper, his jaw line is squarer and the jagged scar that runs down his right cheek is much deeper, giving his face a kind of brooding darkness. He has obviously just finished some sort of exercise session because his body is covered in a thin sheen of perspiration, making him look sort of … not simply sweaty, more basted. My eyes fall to his torso. Parts of it are so defined that I never even knew were an official muscle group. I force myself to jump past the pelvic area and scan down to his feet. Like the rest of him they are immaculately groomed – the nails on each toe are buffed and shaped to perfection, a world away from the pterodactyl-like claws that most men tended to reveal at the beginning of every summer. A lemony, woody scent fills the space between us. I have a feeling it’s Issey Miyake. The visual and nasal stimulus is so intense that I totally forget to do my (heavily rehearsed) casual greeting, cowering as if I am expecting him to hit me again. Instead, I find myself giving him a wave as if I’m setting off on a cruise. He gives me a confused but half-hearted wave back as though he is unsure as to why I am departing these shores, but isn’t that fussed if I do go.
‘A pretentious wanker?’ I repeat.
‘Well, that’s what the press makes me out to be, isn’t it?’ His voice is posher than I was expecting, but it isn’t luvvie-ish. It’s got a kind of lazy lilt to it.
‘But that doesn’t mean everyone accepts what they say.’
‘Most people do.’
‘Why do you think that is?’
‘It’s easier to take the piss out of someone than to try to understand them. Any form of spirituality is only wanting to be at peace with yourself and the world around you, but it’s hard to explain that without sounding even more of a …’ He drifts off, as if he can’t be bothered.
‘Why talk about it, then?’
‘I wish I hadn’t, but I had to give them something. They need those sorts of details to manufacture the image of … “the” Maximilian Fry.’
I pull a face at him. ‘Did you just place an italic ‘the’ before your name and imaginary parentheses around it?’
‘Not purposefully,’ he replies. ‘I’m severely dyslexic – so that all sounds rather complex.’
I realise the lilt in Maximilian’s voice is not laziness, it’s guardedness mixed with arrogance … plus a tinge of self-persecution. Or possibly self-righteousness. Definitely self-indulgence.
‘Give them something else, then,’ I tell him. ‘Lose the spiritual stuff and find another party piece.’
He peers at me.
‘You know, a prop, a talking point, a gimmick …’ I explain. ‘What about a pig? George Clooney used to bang on about his pot-bellied one the whole time and everyone always says what a regular dude he is. Make sure you opt for traditional swine like him, though, those tiny micro ones are way too 2010 and dubiously bred. You wouldn’t want animal rights groups on your back.’
Now, he yawns. We stand in silence, and I really mean silence. It feels weird, being in London and hearing no sound whatsoever. Actually … what’s that? I hear a very faint humming noise. Possibly the buzz of anxiety from a neighbour running low on Prosecco or Jo Malone candles. Then I realise it is coming from Maximilian’s gigantic steel fridge.
‘Well,’ I say. ‘This is, er, … fun.’
He drains his bottle of water, then crunches the plastic container into a ball. ‘It wasn’t my idea, it was Barb’s,’ he replies, flatly. Irritability now edging past the guardedness and arrogance.
‘Charming.’
‘But obviously, I am glad you’re here.’
‘Oh, clearly you are. Although, I have to say you were a lot more convincing as a wild dog human hybrid in The Orc’s Progress than you are now as the welcoming host in your own home.’
He gives me the faintest hint of a smile. ‘I would say touché but then the “pretentious wanker” badge would be a done deal, wouldn’t it?’ He pauses and throws the crumpled bottle of water in the direction of a steel column by the door that leads out onto the terrace. Annoyingly it sails over my head and lands perfectly in the slot at the top. ‘Look, I’m not great at entertaining, never have been. Not a very attractive trait, I know …’
It is impossible to put into words how attractive he looks as he says this. His sudden body movement has caused beads of sweat to slide down between his pectorals and then one, two, three, four … they trickle over his eight-pack as if they were driving over speed bumps, and consequently disappear under the low-slung waistband of his tracksuit. But just as a new batch of droplets are about to begin their journey, he ruins the show by yanking out the T-shirt from his pocket and putting it on. I force myself to speak.
‘Don’t worry, you’re doing okay. I wasn’t expecting to arrive and find you setting up for a game of Twister. But I suppose if I was being really picky, you could have said “hello”.’
He rubs his head with his towel and I notice a small ‘Z’ tattoo on the inside of his wrist. I’m surprised he didn’t have it lasered as soon as he found out Zoe had cheated on him.
‘Didn’t I even do that? Fuck … sorry. Let me get you some tea or something.’
‘What’s the “something”?’
He goes over to the fridge – I can almost taste the trail of Issey Miyake he leaves in his wake – and opens the door. Every shelf is packed with row after row of Fiji water, each bottle placed perfectly in line with the label turned out.
‘Is that the only choice for “something”? I ask.
‘Yes, this would be the “something”.’
‘Well, you’ve redeemed yourself a little bit in the pretentious wanker stakes. I was fearing coconut water.’
He starts opening cupboards randomly, briefly reminding me of Luke in Adele’s kitchen.
‘Bet I lose points for not knowing where the glasses are kept, though … the housekeeper usually leaves some out.’
‘I’m fine with the bottle,’ I tell him, although I am intrigued to see what he keeps in those cupboards; whey powder, protein bars, supplements … no real food. Interesting.
‘Who the fuck drinks coconut water, anyway?’ asks Maximilian.
‘Celebrities. It’s the showbiz refreshment of choice … especially post work-out. You must know that? Everyday there’s a picture on the TMZ website of some ambitious personality vacuum leaving a West Hollywood studio gripping on to a yoga mat and a carton of the stuff.’
He shrugs. ‘I’ve never used the internet.’
‘You what?’ I try to imagine the self-control and the complete indifference to modern culture that must require. It is mind blowing. ‘Aren’t you remotely curious?’
‘No. Barb does my official site, but I’ve never looked at it. Occasionally, I look at a computer screen when my financial advisor is here … but I don’t even have an email address.’
‘And you’ve never Googled yourself?’
‘Why would I need to do that?’ His eyes focus directly on mine for the first time. ‘I’ve got a pretty good idea of who I am.’
I’m still considering how to reply to this when Barb clip-clops in. She winks at me, then nudges her client in the stomach and pretends she has hurt her knuckle on his rock-hard abdominals.
‘That’s what you call marketable goods, right, kiddo?’ she gushes. ‘Bet you’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘Him,’ mutters Maximilian. ‘Him.’
‘Yeah, you, er … must have a really good team of trainers,’ I say casually, in a bid not to sound as if I am agreeing too wholeheartedly. ‘Or do you just have one really mean one?’
‘I don’t have any,’ he says, his voice flattening again.
Barb’s BlackBerry vibrates. She checks the caller ID and immediately answers it.
‘Yeah, it’s me. Shoot … uh huh. I’m listening.’ She covers the phone with her hand and glances over at Maximilian. ‘It’s JP. I’m going to take this in the study and put him on speaker with Nicholas. FYI, Maxy, Vivian was telling me she also acts.’
As she leaves the room, I shake my head at him. ‘When she says I “act”, she doesn’t mean I act in the way that you act.’
‘What way would that be?’ he asks, indicating to me to sit down at the large glass table in the centre of the room. ‘Acting is acting. Either you are or you’re not.’
‘I mean, I haven’t hit that level … doing movies and stuff,’ I tell him. ‘I’ve appeared in lots of commercials. Have you ever been in an ad?’
‘No,’ he says emphatically. ‘I don’t do advertising.’ He adds this in the same tone as Martha Stewart might insist she has never bought pancake mix. ‘We’re talking about you, though. What about television drama … done any of that?’
‘Yeah, a fair bit.’ I sit down in a Perspex dining chair. ‘The best role I’ve had was the first one I landed after college: a prostitute in Prime Suspect. I featured prominently in the first two-hour episode but then I was garroted and dumped in a lock-up.’
‘You got to work with Dame Helen Mirren?’ comments Maximilian. ‘Many actresses would kill to work alongside her …’
‘… and more often than not pretend to have been killed too,’ I laugh, but he only reciprocates with another tiny flicker of a smile. ‘Have you ever died on screen? I mean, acted as if you were passing away, not been crap in the role.’
‘I nearly died in A Son and a Lover of pneumonia.’
‘Oh yeah, I remember. You were skeletal …’
All the papers reported on Maximilian’s dramatic weight loss for the role, especially as he was still only a teenager. It seemed extreme then, but not so much now. Since then, actors such as Christian Bale, Matthew McConaughey, Michael Fassbender … they’ve all been allowed to damn nearly starve themselves to death to play a movie character. It’s weird how actresses never get to go that far on screen. (They’re expected to look skinnier in real life.) Even when supposedly suffering from malnutrition in Les Mis, Anne Hathaway merely looked as if she was on the Attack phase of the Dukan.
‘How did you reach your target weight?’ I ask casually. But specifically so.
Maximilian shrugs at me. ‘Incredibly, I ate less and exercised more. It wasn’t a big deal. I’ll do whatever a role requires to convince an audience I am that character. I love what I do and get paid stupid amounts of money to do it. Ultimately, total dedication is what the crew who surround me and the audience who pay to come and see me deserve. It’s no more or less fucking complicated than that.’
‘Wow, that’s a particularly un-pretentious and nonwankerish thing to say. Didn’t you mean, I believe in becoming one with my art?’
He ignores my quip and sits down opposite me, his eyes focus on mine again. ‘So, tell me, Vivian, how far would you go?’
‘Erm … oh, I er … well …’ I look at my lap. ‘To be honest, the sort of parts I audition for don’t require too much application.’
‘There’s your answer, then.’
‘Answer to what?’ I ask, suddenly noticing a loose thread on the bottom of Adele’s vest. Shit. I must have snagged it on something.
‘Why you haven’t hit “that level”,’ explains Maximilian. ‘Decent casting directors can sense a lack of commitment. They can smell it the moment you walk in the room. You should approach every part wanting to feel that person; give everything, do everything, be everything that they are … because that’s what acting is. The ability to reach inside yourself and pull out a truth …’
He pauses. I glance up. He is staring at me. I stare back.
‘But you won’t be able to do that until you know the truth,’ he continues, his eyes penetrating mine. ‘Until you know your truth … who you really are, you can’t pretend to be someone else.’
‘O-kay. Thanks for the career advice. I’ll bear that in m—’
He interrupts me. ‘Oh, that wasn’t just career advice, Vivian. That was advice for life.’ He holds my gaze for a few moments longer, then his eyes dart to the side. ‘Barb?’
I twist round to see her head cocked round the door. She is chewing her gum even more vigorously.
‘Maxy, we need to have a quick pow-wow with Nicholas.’ She beckons at him with a heavily jewelled hand and then beams at me with an overly generous smile, one that I haven’t seen yet. ‘Apologies, kiddo. We won’t be long.’
As they leave she pulls the door behind them, but it swings back open.
‘Okay, Maxy,’ I overhear her say as they disappear down the corridor. ‘I’m going to give you this straight. JP has bailed. He’s looking to cast elsewhere for Truth 2.’ She doesn’t give him a chance to react. ‘Am I surprised? Not really. Your train hasn’t exactly been pulling into Good Press Central recently, but hey, I’ve never let you come off the tracks. You know I’ll get you to your final destination.’
‘Barb, lose the clunky metaphor. I’ve already told you, I’m not going t—’
She interrupts him. ‘You’ll do what’s required, Maxy. You hear me?’ Again, she doesn’t give him time to reply. ‘By the way, how did you get on with that Vivian?’
‘Why?’
‘She could be useful.’
Then a door slams and I can’t catch any more.
I sit back in my chair. Useful? Really? I’m not usually. Most of what I do on a daily basis could easily be done by someone else. I like the idea of being considered useful, though. Definitely a step up from simply serving a purpose and a world away from being wholly surplus to anyone’s requirement, something which I used to feel every day when I wasn’t so …
