Material Girl

by Louise Kean

  As I walk back up to The Majestic I pass a series of people on the street, all of whom seem familiar. It seems to me that they are the same three people that I see everywhere. They walk in and out of my life, like extras, and I’ve always seen them before. I swear I just held the door open for one of them at the clinic, and another sat next to me on the tube this morning. The same three people are playing all the bit parts in my life. Maybe God or the Devil or whoever is running this crazy show hasn’t got enough people to go around any more, to flesh out all the stories being told down here.

  I amble up towards the stage. Gavin is moving boxes three at a time into the wings. None of the cast is around. I can’t see Tristan or hear him either. When Gavin spots me he mutters something under his breath, as he lowers a batch of boxes down and walks to the front of the stage, his giant hands on his giant hips. He is wearing a T-shirt that says ‘It IS the size of the boat’ in bright pink on grey. You can’t miss it. I wonder if I should buy a T-shirt that reads ‘I’m good at sex’: it seems to be the fashion these days.

  ‘You’re late,’ he says, as if he expected nothing less.

  I check my watch: it’s midday.

  ‘I thought you said there was no late?’ I reply.

  ‘There is today. She’s waiting for you downstairs, she’s been here for half an hour.’ He raises his eyebrows and looks at me like I’ve done something wrong, and I should have known better, and I am hugely irritated. I want to slap him away from me, as if he were tracing the very tip of a feather up and down my shinbones and I had my hands tied together behind my back. That kind of irritating. The kind that makes you want to scream.

  ‘Shit. Okay. Gavin, is this bad? Are you going to call my agency? Will I get fired?’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody dramatic, Scarlet. Just go.’ He turns his back on me in favour of the boxes. The air between us is electric with his animosity, which is at best inappropriate, and at worst downright rude. He didn’t even proposition me outright, last night; I don’t know why his feelings are so bruised. But I have a more pressing concern.

  I tap down the corridor to Dolly’s room. My heels click like castanets on the concrete. As I try to run in a bra that was not built for exercise, my breasts bounce about like footballs that my ribs keeps ‘heading’ upwards to my chin. I skid around a corner at speed and find myself thrown against Tom Harvey-Saint. He doesn’t miss a beat, and grabs the flesh at the top of my arms like Clark Gable grabbed Vivian Leigh in Gone With The Wind. I find myself inches from his face.

  ‘No running in the halls, Scarlet, or I’ll have you in for detention,’ he whispers with a smirk.

  ‘Let me go,’ I manage, my heart banging so fast in my chest that I am scared he will hear it.

  ‘If you want me to,’ he says, and practically throws me away. I gasp, and run past him, screeching to a halt outside of Dolly’s room. With one hand on the doorknob I freeze like a musical statue at a childhood party as somebody yanks the stylus up off a Bucks Fizz record. The ‘Do NOT Disturb’ sign has been removed, but the lavender parcel is still there. My heart is in my mouth. Do I knock? Do I wait to be announced, and if so, by whom? Should I just go in?

  ‘Damn well get in here.’ The old-lady mid-Atlantic voice from behind the door is louder than a whisper, softer than a shout, but it means business.

  I push the door open a fraction, only enough to be able to poke my head around, and with eyes closed declare ‘I’m so sorry’ before Dolly can say anything. The smell of lavender invades my nostrils. It has intensified in the room tenfold since yesterday; I expect we’ll be the scene of an imminent and violent wasp storm, stung to death before we’ve even said our hellos.

  I open my eyes and smile.

  Dolly sits in her velvet chair, examining the rings on her fingers. Her knees are slightly apart, and she leans back gracelessly. Her back curves with the chair for support. She wears a shin-length velvet housecoat in deep catholic purple, and a long gold chain with a black locket on the end hangs around her neck, the locket itself sitting so low that it has made a cushion of her rounded old-lady belly. She looks, if not plump, bloated. Plump is too young a word. Plump implies bounce or softness. Dolly looks brittle. Her hands rest on either side of her knees on the velvet of the chair, weighed down by the huge amethyst and amber rings that she inspects, which are apparently far more interesting than me. She wears expensive light brown trousers with crisp creases sliced down the middle that she obviously didn’t press in herself, but also what appear to be dark brown men’s shove-on slippers from the cheapest section of Marks & Spencer. Her hair is very short and jet-black, obviously colour-treated, and styled in spikes like black ice stalagmites on her head: like barbed wire to stop intruders. Her cheeks are heavy with gravity and coursed through with tiny fine lines. Her rounded jowls resemble weights around her neck. Her eyes are wide and violet and glassy, each one topped by a thin black pencil acute accent. In contrast to the rest of her face her forehead is completely smooth. The Botox bell peals in my head. It is striking at this distance.

  The only make-up I can detect on her face is a dark bloodstain of lipstick smeared across her mouth, as if she’s just sucked down a whole tin of beetroots. Her fingers dance slightly by her sides with a faint tremble. I witness a small but constant shaking in the furthest reaches of her limbs. She neither smiles nor frowns. Now she is done staring at her rings, and stares at me instead, expectantly. Her eyes are suddenly clear, if not her expectation.

  ‘Hi,’ I say.

  Then my phone rings.

  Her eyes widen as I reach inside to grab at it, apologising again, ripping it out to see the name of the caller, surprised I even have a signal in here. It carries on ringing.

  ‘Turn the damn thing off, darling,’ she says flatly, in a transatlantic drawl, and I fumble with buttons to make it stop before throwing it on the side. It knocks over one of her cards and I grimace.

  ‘Well,’ she says, addressing her rings again. ‘I can be late for you.’ She sighs and runs her amber ring up and down and up her finger again, sliding it over the knuckle. ‘You, on the other hand, cannot be late for me. And do you know why?’

  ‘Because you’re …’

  She interrupts me with a glare and I stop talking.

  ‘Because I’m the one with my picture at the front of the theatre.’ She smiles and blinks slowly. ‘I don’t care what your excuse is, or how much terrible magnetism there may be between you and Mr Harvey-Saint.’

  I gasp, but if she hears it she ignores it.

  ‘A woman should always be late for a man, I have always said that and always will, and don’t say anything else to anybody because I’ll denounce you for a liar. I don’t disapprove of that. Men should wait. But a woman should never be late for another woman, particularly in these circumstances, but still. A woman’s time is precious: she has things, so many things, to attend to, to be at her best. Don’t waste her time by thinking your time is more valuable. But for now, I’m not staying. I thought that I might, but I find myself exhausted, worn out by the dreadful journey, this damned London traffic. But! But, but, but … I wanted to see you, of course. They told me poor Yvonne left, and of course it made me sad as I thought she was very good. Very good. Apart from her lip-lines, which were, of course, terrible. And her eyelines. Everything, really. Let’s be honest, the poor girl is in entirely the wrong profession, she has no arm for make-up. The best have always have a certainty in their hand. But still. She’s left. It’s sad. And now you’re here.’ A smile rushes across her eyes. She doesn’t seem sad. She pushes herself to her feet, but the effect isn’t dramatic: she is surprisingly small, five feet two perhaps, smaller than me. She reaches forwards for a fresh batch of unopened colourful envelopes.

  ‘Fans,’ she whispers at me, widening her eyes like a flasher. ‘Who would have thought I’d still have them? But here they are. Friends, really. Who write to say hello, to tell me they still think of me. It’s sweet. Because of DVDs, mostly, I’m sure. They get to see
me again. And yet it seems a dreadful waste of paper. I saw on the news, about the forests. I should say something really. Tell them to stop writing. But of course I love them as well. They are like love letters to me these days. I don’t get many any more. In my time I’ve had plenty. Boxes full, houses full. But not now. And you miss what you’ve had, of course. A woman needs love letters. We don’t ask for much. You can only dream of what you haven’t had, but it’s a loss if you’ve known it and then it slips away.’

  She fusses with one of the envelopes, trying to tear it open with her old purple nails, but her hands seem weak, and they tremble in their attempts. She can’t get a grip on the paper to tear it, her fingers slipping down it like it’s iced. I step forward, not sure whether to offer my help or not, but she immediately tosses it onto the side.

  ‘Bloody cards,’ she says.

  She rests both of her palms flat on the counter, and turns her head over her shoulder to look me up and down. Her violet eyes reveal little this time. I glance down embarrassed, as I sometimes do on the tube in the mornings if I catch somebody staring at me. Who are these people who have the confidence not to look away when your gaze locks with theirs?

  ‘I’m going to say something now, and I hope that you don’t mind.’ You can hear the booze in her voice. She fights hard to keep her consonants deliberate. The H in ‘hope’ is loud. ‘You look like a girl who cries too much for my liking. You look like a girl on the brink of tears. I won’t have that.’ She slaps her hand down on the counter, and turns to face me.

  ‘There will be no crying in this room unless I say so, do you understand? You can cry when somebody dies. If somebody dies. But apart from that you learn, and you straighten your back, and you smile.’ She presents me with a theatrical grin. ‘And put your breasts away. I don’t want those damn things stuck in my face while you’re putting on my mascara, you’re not breast-feeding.’ She glances at my chest in obvious distaste. ‘I suppose you’ve had them done, have you? All you silly girls do these days, I see the pictures in the paper. I never needed it. Don’t damn well pander to them. Men! Don’t let them think you should be more than you are, just to please them! Ha! Are they so hard to please? Big titties, small titties, pointy little titties like Ava had, but God they loved her! She was ten times too much for any man! Don’t throw your hoop in with those types, if all they want is titties! The point is they don’t have them! Don’t maim yourself for them! Tell them you want foot-longer manhoods, and ask them to chop into those! Ha! Would they be so foolish? Obviously not. But some silly girl has done it and now you all think you have to do it. Men should never be allowed to get it all their own way; it ruins them, like a bottle of good perfume exposed to sunlight, day in, day out. They go off. It’s a waste. A perfectly good man can be ruined by getting everything he wants, trust me on that.’

  She sighs with the exhaustion that explanation of the obvious takes out of her. ‘I mean! I understand they insert some kind of water balloons in these girls’ chests? Is that what you’ve got in there? Balloons? Ha! How ridiculous! Any real man would feel like a fool groping at a couple of water balloons and getting excited, wouldn’t you think? It’s degrading for all concerned. You may as well tell them to hump sofa cushions! What’s wrong with a corset for evenings out? Because, darling, let’s be honest, all these girls parading around with their titties out and their bellies out and their skirts! Violently exposing themselves! I’ve had underwear that covers more than their cocktail dresses, and do you think men didn’t love me because of it? All these girls, stinking of the cheapest kind of sex, it’s not doing anybody any good. Don’t believe a man who says that he likes it, it makes him free like an animal, and no gentleman ever gave himself over to his animal side. A real man controls the lust in his loins, for the right time, the right place. And then – ha! Then you get the whole measure of him, and only you! Ha! That’s when the fun should start, behind closed doors! That’s the party! Ha!’

  I open my mouth to speak but before I can she glares at my legs as if evil just walked into the room.

  ‘Are those polka-dot stockings?’ she asks, addressing my hold-ups.

  ‘Who in Christ’s name told you to wear those? The black skirt, the black v-neck, that cheap little scarf around your neck, are all acceptable – a little sombre perhaps, maybe somebody did die! Ha! But polka-dot tights? And with pink shoes? Pink shoes! My mother always said, “Only a woman with no obvious redeeming quality need ever wear whores’ shoes.” Apart from whores, of course, to make it obvious, and earn a living. And I have no problem with whores and don’t tell anybody that I do because I’ll call you a liar! If they are using the only thing God gave them, so be it. Aren’t men the fools, to pay? Luckily for some of us he gave us a little more. And believe me, they’ll put no price on class.’

  ‘I like them,’ I say quietly.

  ‘Whores? Or those shoes, darling?’

  ‘My shoes …’ I whisper.

  ‘Well that says a lot,’ she says, with an evil smile to herself, like Elizabeth the First signing a death warrant and planning her outfit for the execution.

  ‘So. Well. What’s your name then?’ Slumping back down into her seat again, she tugs off her rings, reaching for a pot of hand-cream. She scoops a dollop into her palms and it squelches through her fingers and makes a sound like squeezing rotten fruit until it bursts.

  ‘Scarlet,’ I say. She chuckles and grimaces.

  ‘Oh dear. Oh darling. That’s unfortunate! You can’t win, can you? Who gave you that name? The same person that gave you those shoes, I’ll bet? No, that’s far too violent a name for me to deal with. Does anybody call you anything else?’

  ‘My boyfriend calls me Scar …’ I apologise.

  ‘Like from an accident, like pain?’ she says, and shrieks a laugh, slapping one of her thighs at the same time, leaving a creamy palm-print on her trousers that I hope will stain forever.

  ‘I don’t … I mean, I think it’s just easy. He just abbreviates it.’

  She raises her eyes to heaven. ‘Is that what you think? Well, okay … Anybody else call you anything less damning?’ she asks.

  I search in my head to find something else, and not humiliate myself by making something up to please her.

  ‘My mum used to call me Lulu.’ I have almost forgotten that she did, and still does sometimes, occasionally, but not often. Only when she’s had a couple of glasses of Pinot Noir and then tells me that she loves me. But she used to use it all the time, when I was very young, and we were playing in the garden or she was tickling me. Richard would glug with joy in his pram as she’d chase me round the garden, screaming, ‘I’m coming to get you, Lulu!’ with her tickle fingers out, and I shrieked with laughter, and she did too. Whenever I picture my mother being truly happy, she’s outside. I think even the biggest room hemmed her in, if there was somebody else in it. She needs silence, preaching its virtues to me every time I speak to her, when I am confused or angry or sad. ‘You need to sit alone, Scarlet. You need to listen to yourself. You’ll see. Sometimes you need to think about who you are, to enable you to be who you should be.’ I am generally confounded, but I nod and I smile, and sometimes I even try to sit, without the radio on or the TV, or Ben’s Xbox blowing things up in the background. It’s never a real silence. I can always hear the cars on the street, or a police siren screeching down the Broadway, or the bell on the door downstairs daintily tinkle with the steady stream of yummy mummies flowing in and out of Plump and Feather. My mum says there is silence where she is, and I think that’s why she’s there. But London is loud. It’s a town-crier place. You can feel lonely in London, but you can never feel alone.

  ‘Used to?’ Dolly says.

  ‘When I was a little girl mostly, before she left home. She doesn’t use it much now.’

  ‘Why did she leave? To join the circus?’ Dolly chuckles again.

  ‘No. I don’t … know … really, she just wasn’t happy, wanted different things.’

  ‘Different t
o you?’

  ‘No. Different things out of life … and she and my dad drifted apart.’

  ‘You’re probably overestimating how close they were to begin with. But still. I can understand that, of course. So she saddled you with Scarlet then ran off with a sailor, eh?’ She smiles at me. I don’t know what to say. ‘Well. Good for her. At least she had the sense to change it, your name I mean, in private. Learn from your mistakes, that’s what I say. So, then. I’m going to call you Lulu. I had a Great Aunt Lulu, she drank meths and married an Israeli carpenter called Joseph. Very droll.’

  I don’t like the way that it sounds on her beetroot-stained lips. When my mum says it, after two large wines, ‘I love you, Lulu’, it’s like a soft gurgle, something a baby might say by mistake, without knowing what it’s saying. But the way that Dolly Russell says it, quick and sharp like two gunshots? It stings, and it makes me feel ridiculous.

  ‘Actually, I think … I don’t think I like it,’ I say. ‘I think it might upset me. I don’t see my mum as much as I’d like, and can’t we just use something else? Or maybe Scarlet might grow on you?’

  ‘Lulu suits you though, darling. LULU! Ha! It’ll be fine. It won’t hurt after the fifth or sixth time, like plucking your eyebrows or poisoned injections in your forehead. I’ve had some of those. And I’ll tire of shouting it in this little room soon enough.’

  ‘I really …’

  She glares at me. I stop talking.

  ‘Now, then. Do you have any gin?’ She looks around to see if she can spot any.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Did you bring any gin with you?’ she says again, enunciating every syllable.

  ‘Sorry, nobody told me to. And it’s not even one p.m. yet …’ I reply with a smile that I hope reflects that I mean well.

  ‘Well.’ She looks down at her hands as she keeps rubbing them together like Fagin collecting the spoils, ‘I wasn’t asking for your advice, I was asking for your gin.’

  ‘I don’t have any, sorry,’ I say quietly.