Material Girl

by Louise Kean

  ‘Oh, Make-up, so naïve. They still do it to this day in some of the southern states of America.’ Tristan nods his head at me convincingly.

  ‘Shut up, no they don’t, you are being ridiculous.’ I stand up but Tristan pushes me back down onto my stool.

  ‘Make-up, I’m not finished. And who has done the research, you or me? And who wants to look like a fool in front of Dolly Russell, perhaps the last true Hollywood starlet, when she asks you what you know about theatre?’

  ‘I can just say some stuff about plays and things. I’ve read some … Arthur Miller,’ I say, thankful that I could remember the name of an American playwright.

  ‘And the cartoon section in the Sunday Times as well, Make-up? Come on now, sit down, you need to know this.’

  Tristan is obviously enjoying himself.

  ‘But don’t you have stuff to do?’ I ask, exhausted.

  ‘Yes. This. Now, in March 1901, looking for a venue to stage his dancing act The Sabines, Pierre Christophe Magrine, a French businessman who had made a name for himself as a slick mover amongst his contemporaries, and the chorus girls if you get my gist, bought The Majestic as a venue for his style of evening entertainment. On the day the renovators removed the boards from the entrance, triumphantly kicking the door down, an evil stench seeped out. Covering their mouths with handkerchiefs, swiping at their watering eyes, they weaved their way to the back of the stage, following the smell as it became increasingly passionate, leading them finally to a small locked cupboard, big enough for a chair and a mirror and a shelf. Evil curiosity made them break that door down too, and a dozen well-fed screaming rats hurtled out across their feet. The workmen found the bearded lady decomposed in her dressing room. She still sat stiffly on a small chair in front of a mirror that had been smashed. By the streaks of blood on the glass it was fair to say that punching her reflection had been the dying act of a circus freak. The floor of the theatre was littered in rat droppings, and the walls were stained sticky and brown with cigarette tar, but The Majestic was cleaned up again.’

  ‘She killed herself because she was ugly?’ I ask, appalled.

  ‘Not just ugly, Make-up, a freak.’

  ‘But lots of women have hair on their faces, most girls wax, or laser, or whatever …’

  ‘Not back then, Make-up. Back then it made you a freak, and freaks don’t get married and have kids and get loved back.’

  ‘Yes they do, that’s an awful thing to say! You don’t just love somebody because of the way they look …’ I admonish him, slapping away the brush he’s been running up and down my nose.

  ‘Hush, Make-up. No lies in here please, let me finish my story. The Sabines – feathered, sequinned and high-kicking – remained at the theatre for nine years before Magrine set sail for Hollywood and the moving pictures. By this time The Majestic had established itself as a popular venue for light entertainment. Magrine sold the theatre on to a fresh set of investors, and a new management board was established. A series of light comedies played throughout 1910 and 1911, decadent and fun and attended mostly by lower middle-class workers, but disaster struck in 1912 when a discarded cigarette in a props cupboard sparked a blaze that had, by the time the firemen arrived, gutted the entire front and back of stage. All sets were destroyed, as was the curtain and the boxes. The roof had substantial fire damage, as the heat had crept quickly up the walls, and the building was judged to be unsound unless the top tier was pulled out. One unusually mild September night in 1913, The Majestic went from holding a spectacular one thousand seats to a mere six hundred and forty-three. Some of the bigger bitches of the time suggested that “The Majestic” was far too grand a name for a two-tiered theatre, and that it should be changed … But after an extensive renovation that lasted five years and employed the art deco style so popular in Paris at the time, although in clumsy contrast to the front of house, The Majestic, still known as The Majestic, reopened in 1918.’

  ‘Ta da!’ I say. ‘And then they showed some plays, and then it was Dolly Russell’s turn, and then …’

  ‘Stop it. I’ve nearly finished.’ Tristan glares at me.

  ‘Do you promise? I feel like I’m back in my history A-level,’ I say.

  ‘But weren’t they good times?’ he asks.

  I think about history class, sitting next to Helen, flirting with Simon Howells across the room over textbooks filled with black and white pictures of war.

  ‘Yes, actually,’ I admit with a shrug.

  ‘Good. Then learn something new. The Majestic became known for its musical theatre, staging 267 performances of No, No, Nanette before it transferred to The Palace Theatre at Cambridge Circus. And although The Majestic fared well in the Twenties with numerous Noël Coward productions, nothing ever seemed to really take off. The Majestic just couldn’t get a hit. It became known amongst actors and crew as a “warm up” theatre, with shows that sold reasonably but rarely sold out. It was then that The Majestic earned its nickname, in theatre circles, as The Bridesmaid. For example …’ He takes a step back and strikes an affected pose.

  ‘Fur and feathers and lipstick: “What’s next for you, darling?”’

  He jumps a foot and turns to face the space he has vacated.

  ‘Cravat, purple shirt and slacks: “I’m starting rehearsals next month for Noël Coward at The Bridesmaid, darling.”’

  A jump. ‘Fur and feathers and lipstick: “Where were you hoping for, darling?”’

  Jump. ‘Cravat, purple shirt and slacks: “The Apollo. Damned shame. Maybe next year. Drink, darling?”’

  He stands still and straightens his now-crooked glasses.

  ‘A faulty oil lamp started the blaze that ravaged the old girl again, in 1931. It swept through The Bridesmaid like fleas in a halfway house, killing two tramps who slept under the sympathetic curves of the front entrance each night. The theatre was left for dead for two years, occasionally sighing and groaning to let Londoners know it was still there. She was past her best, charred and black with soot, damp from fire hoses, with rotting carpets and rats, the terrible rats, infesting her again, chewing at her insides. A sad and lonely old Bridesmaid, hoping for a little luck and love.’

  ‘Why are you looking at me like that, I have luck and …’ My words trail off.

  ‘Make-up, don’t be so sensitive. The Majestic was spectacularly reopened on the third of September 1939! Ta da! Of course, the timing was a little unfortunate, and her big night was dampened spitefully by the speech made by Neville Chamberlain at eleven fifteen that morning –

  “This country is at war with Germany … now may God bless you all, and may he defend the right. For it is evil things that we shall be fighting against …” Still, the old girl was up and running again just in time: some nights they acted by candlelight, some nights they acted in the dark, which was more than could be said for other prettier theatres who dropped their curtain at the first sound of a siren.

  ‘Ivor Novello musicals trilled though the Forties and Fifties, with their beguiling talk of kingdoms of love and beauty and starlight, stepping lightly aside for the more sombre, stern faces of The Postman Always Knocks Twice and A Streetcar Named Desire as the Sixties drew in. The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore first opened in 1968.’

  ‘With Joanna Till?’ I ask, feeling, finally, like I can contribute – I read that name in the press pack.

  ‘That’s right. Well done. Gold star. Initially it was a far from controversial or even noteworthy opening. Lacking the public pulling power of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, or Streetcar, the critics called it a “strange little play for the strangest little theatre in the West End, and surely only being staged as a vanity project for Joanna Till.”’

  ‘Joanna Till had been one of the first studio stars in her youth, an international beauty with platinum curls that framed a pale complexion and a perfect cupid’s bow permanently painted on her delicate lips throughout the 1920s. By the time she came to play Mrs Goforth, the dying monster at the heart of the play – who h
as seen off numerous husbands and is now a recluse in an Italian villa dictating her memoirs to her young and beleaguered assistant – Joanna was an alcoholic who ate barely one meal a day, and whom few saw out of make-up. But an old beauty still sang in her eyes, reminding those close enough that she was once the greatest prize to be won, the cup on the table, the lady in the booth at the front of the mile-long “dime for a kiss” queue. The memory of what she had been haunted all of her movements. Her fingers danced and flickered nervously about her face, trying to cover every line simultaneously, attempting to distract any audience from the age that had set in and which now clung to her once-beautiful features like an evil moss to smooth pebbles in a lake.

  ‘One of the only members of the company that she allowed close was her young co-star Edward “Teddy” Hampden, who played the impertinent but handsome visitor Chris, and who, at thirty-five, was twenty-eight years Joanna’s junior.’

  ‘Good for her!’ I mutter, but Tristan ignores me.

  ‘Joanna could be heard giggling from behind her dressing-room door in the afternoons, after matinee and before evening. She rarely spent any time alone, aside from “the half” – the half an hour before each performance when she would shoo away her young admirer and compose herself. But even then, occasionally, he was allowed back in. The controversy murmured in every nook of The Bridesmaid. Teddy shot Joanna through the heart, six hours after she finished their affair over a cajun salmon lunch at the Savoy.’

  I gasp. Tristan nods his head seriously.

  ‘Although they had been involved for barely three months they were being too indiscreet, and news had reached her husband, the world-famous director Sir Terence Till. Sir Terence placed an outraged and irate long-distance call from a set in Egypt telling Joanna to behave. Teddy at least had the decency to turn the gun on himself afterwards, aiming straight through his heart as well. So the strange little play’s curtain failed to rise the following night, as both the leads’ hearts were streaked across a dressing-room wall.’

  I look around urgently – ‘Not this room, Tristan? Not these walls?’ – feeling a cold chill run down my spine, the kind you get when you are a kid and somebody pokes out the game ‘Does-this-make-your-blood-run-cold?’, finishing with a grab on the back of your neck. I shudder.

  ‘It’s possible,’ he says, seriously, ‘it’s very possible. Anyway, controversy courted The Majestic again six years later, in November 1974, when a performance of Hair so shocked a four-hundred-pound Presbyterian Texan banker that he suffered a massive heart attack in the second row. The banker died, and so did the show, after two months and below-average ticket sales, even for The Bridesmaid.’

  ‘We should move to another venue,’ I say earnestly, nodding my head, ready to pack up my things and dust off the bad luck I can feel settling in on me and Tristan as we sit for too long in one place in this cursed theatre.

  ‘Too late, the tickets have been sold, Make-up. Then, in 1981, as a protest against the Falklands war, some of the younger members of the cast of The Iceman Cometh – the ones blessed with better bodies and less inhibition – seized the opportunity to host a naked sit-in on the stage of The Majestic. It quickly descended into a televised orgy that had to be disbanded by policemen in plastic gloves. It was the sight of the gloves that my mum, actually, remembered from the six o’clock news that evening. She hadn’t spotted the blink-and-you-missed-it glimpse of an erect penis on television, the first to officially appear on UK terrestrial TV, according to The Guinness Book of Records. But she saw the gloves. Typical mum, ha!’ he says, shaking his head affectionately.

  ‘So then The Majestic closed, again, for refurbishment in 1989, looking sad and tired, and in desperate need of a facelift, Botox, any and all kinds of surgery that might be on offer. It reopened in 1995, polished and tightened, but some say lacking some of its old character.’

  ‘I wish you hadn’t told me the shooting bit,’ I say, looking around me feeling creepy, ‘I’m going to have trouble going to the kitchen on my own now.’

  ‘Stop it, Make-up, you’re a grown woman. So! That brings us up-to-date. The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore, starring Dolly Russell, and directed by me, Tristan Mitra, will mark her return to the London stage for the first time in eighteen years!’ Tristan swirls on the spot and claps his hands like he’s just finished conducting a big band.

  ‘And, so, what about Dolly?’ I ask, exasperated.

  ‘Oh yes, of course, Dolly. What can I tell you about Dolly Russell? Other than that she drugged the last Make-up? Ha! Don’t be put off by that! It just shows guile. Well,’ he hushes his voice to a low murmur, to a purr, ‘I don’t know how old she is … maybe seventy-two, maybe sixty-eight, it’s hard to say. But she hasn’t been on stage for over fifteen years. I’ve barely had her up there yet, without some screaming match or tantrum or silent seething fit. And that’s just me. Ha.’

  He picks up my large powder brush. Its bristles still sparkle silver from my last job on Friday, glistening up dancers for the cover of a disco album – two emaciated eighteen-year-old girls who ate half a bag of crisps each on a twelve-hour shoot. Tristan dusts his face with it lightly, breathing in while he does. He leans towards me and, with serious intent, dusts my cheeks with it too. I step back a little, against the counter. He stares at me. I realise that I am his new Girls World. I just hope he doesn’t try to cut my hair with nail scissors.

  ‘The light in here is really bad,’ I say, embarrassed, ‘it’s far too dark.’

  ‘Shush,’ he says, and moves my arms that I have crossed against my chest back down to my sides, like a shop mannequin.

  ‘She didn’t get her Oscar until she was thirty-three, for The Queen Wants a King. Have you seen it?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  He picks up another brush, flicks it against his palm, and puts it down again. I want to tell him to stop now but I don’t.

  ‘It’s very good. It’s the only role I’ve seen her in with no vanity. Isn’t that ironic? They demand she be painted and pretty at all times but they give her an Oscar for being plain, as if being ugly were such an impossible task for her that they had to reward it … Do you think it’s harder to be beautiful or plain, Make-up? I mean, in the mornings, how long does it take you? Because you’re a beauty, but I can tell it needs a little work now. A little more effort than it was five years ago, right?’

  ‘Maybe a little,’ I say, cringing at the thought of the price of my night cream, and my day cream, and my paraffin cleanser.

  ‘And a little more moisturiser than before? A little more time spent slicking away at those laughter lines?’ He picks up a tub of thick cream, and scoops a dessert spoonful onto the back of his hand. He sticks a deliberate finger into it and draws it out slowly, so that a dollop sits clumsily on its end. Reaching out, he takes my arm, and absent-mindedly smears the cream up and down my skin, rubbing it in smoothly as he traces the veins from my wrist to my elbow with his finger. He holds my arm firmly at the wrist with his other hand. I don’t pull away but I feel that if I did he would grip it a little tighter, a little firmer, and resist. I am being seduced by a man with no interest in sex. I am certain he knows the effect that he has.

  ‘But it’s still worth it of course, all the effort, isn’t it? It’s still worth the lingering looks on the tube, and the glances that you notice as you walk down the street, the smiles and the winks. The men who can’t turn away, who will picture you later, picture you tonight, think of you instead of their dowdy other halves. These men who think you’re out of their league, who would love to have a piece of you, an afternoon slice of you with their tea. It’s worth that extra twenty minutes in the morning, isn’t it, for the approval, isn’t it, Make-up?’

  Tristan dips his little finger into a pot of thick sticky silver glitter. It’s not mine, I don’t know what it is used for. Starlight Express maybe? When he removes his finger the glitter is dripping off it like honey fresh from the pot trickling off Pooh’s paws. Nearby, maybe
two or three rooms away, a woman is singing ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’ soft and high. It feels like midnight.

  ‘Absolutely,’ I whisper. He leans towards me again. With one hand on my shoulder for balance, he raises himself up onto his toes so that we are face to face as he smudges the glitter across my lower lip with his little finger. I find it impossible to believe that he has no libido. Maybe it’s a rumour that he has spread himself as a cunning plan, like the men who tell women they are gay so that they will let them fondle their breasts. Or was it just me that fell for that, late one night in Gerry’s? (When should I start to worry that the extent of my experience is ‘late one night in Gerry’s’?) And I’ve done far worse than that.

  ‘She’s been married four times,’ Tristan says, still staring at me but rubbing his hands together to get rid of the last drops of cream and glitter, ‘and has one daughter, whom she never sees – I think she might live in upstate New York near her dad, Dolly’s third husband, I believe, the actor Peter Deakin. He did a lot horror stuff, he was the wolf man for a while. I think the daughter’s name is Chloe, but she’ll tell you if she wants to. And when you meet her, when you meet Dolly, you’ll realise she must have been quite something, way back when.’

  He reaches for a tissue and wipes his hands, before tossing it casually on the floor, and I lean down to pick it up and throw it in the bin.

  Tristan smiles and says ‘control, I see’ when I do this. I shrug and smile an apology.

  He looks at himself in the mirror, touching his hair lightly, straightening his jacket, flicking a speck of white something off his collar.

  ‘Your bloke,’ he says, still looking at himself. ‘A bit of a monster, is he? A bit of a hound?’

  ‘Not at all, not a monster. Just … disinterested … not as enthusiastic as I’d like him to be.’

  ‘Ah, but is he disinterested in life as well?’

  ‘No. There are things that he likes, that he loves – PlayStation games, and childish films and things …’