Material Girl

by Louise Kean

  I dust a large brush in translucent powder and circle it at her temples, onto her cheeks, and then down towards her chin. She sits in silence for a while.

  ‘I need my water,’ she says eventually. I pass her the glass. She knocks it back in one gulp with closed eyes. I put it on the side and say nothing.

  ‘Tell me more about you, Lulu. You say you have a chap and he’s not queer but he doesn’t like sex?’

  ‘I do have a chap … well … kind of …’ I flick a small flat brush into grey eyeshadow.

  ‘Well, do you or don’t you, darling, it’s an easy thing to answer, surely?’

  ‘I do. I do. But …’

  I have a sudden urge to dump it all on this old wicked witch, everything that’s been churning through my head. I’ll watch her get shocked, choke on the gin she’s still slugging, shut her up, stop her asking questions.

  ‘I do, but I’ve cheated on him, quite a few times actually. And now the clinic that I went to, to get tested, for HIV,’ I say that bit loudly for effect, ‘want me to have a type of counselling. For having too much sex without protection. Slut counselling, Dolly!’

  I stop and wait for her reaction. Her eyes don’t even open, don’t even flicker beneath her closed eyelids. I swirl my Laura Mercier brush angrily into violet shadow, and blow it aggressively. But she doesn’t flinch.

  I brush long strokes across her eyelids.

  ‘Well that sounds joyless, and I have no time for that at all. You should enjoy yourself! Have you thought about gin?’ she asks.

  ‘I think gin might be the problem. Or vodka, or red wine, any of them really.’

  ‘Darling, gin is never the problem! You might be the problem if you can’t take it. Besides, alcohol is no excuse for anything. Even the drunkest man wouldn’t kiss another man, if he wasn’t queer. You have to let yourself do things, even if you are drunk. I think maybe you just aren’t happy with your chap.’

  I sigh. Nothing is going to shock her. I may as well be honest. If nothing else it will be a new opinion on an old mess, even if she does just tell me to stand by my man.

  ‘You’re right. I’m not happy with my chap.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘How long what?’

  ‘How long have you been unhappy with your chap?’ she asks, exasperated.

  ‘Since a couple of months after I met him,’ I say, sighing with the relief of honesty. I haven’t been happy for a long time.

  ‘And how long have you been courting?’

  ‘Three years. Except it’s more than courting. We live together.’

  ‘Oh dear, Lulu, how did you get yourself in this mess? And if you aren’t happy, darling, then call me a silly old woman, but why on earth do you stay?’

  Where is ‘stand by your man’? Did I miss it? I almost look behind me to see if I glimpse it shutting the door. ‘Because I love him,’ I say, a little confused that I should have to explain that to her. She’s the old one, not me. I’m supposed to be the generation with the commitment issues.

  I stop smudging white powder into the corners of her eyes. She opens them and looks at me.

  ‘And?’ she asks expectantly.

  ‘And what if I don’t love anybody else like I love him?’

  She closes her eyes again. ‘We both know that’s not true, what a silly thing to say. Christ, Lulu, don’t be a silly girl. There is nothing worse than a silly girl. Don’t believe it, darling, this nonsense talk in the play: “for me there are no others”,’ she says theatrically, her voice rising and filling the room. ‘But there are always others, Lulu! This idea that there is just “one” person for anybody is damned ludicrous, I don’t know who came up with it. Of course you can meet somebody and they can fit perfectly and they can do it, maybe, if you like it that way, for the rest of your life. But that doesn’t mean there wouldn’t have been others. Of course there would! And there will be! I bet you just like the look of him, don’t you? Your chap. And that makes it harder to leave.’

  I smile and reach for the mascara. The air-conditioning gasps quickly.

  ‘I do still fancy him, yes. And after three years I think that’s pretty good going.’

  ‘Well, it enables you to carry on fucking him at least.’

  It’s my turn to gasp.

  Dolly’s violet eyes flash open like a zombie just brought back to life in a music video. ‘What?’ she asks me dryly.

  ‘I don’t know … well … you said fuck!’ Even as I say it I feel ridiculous, but it was so unexpected.

  ‘I’m old, darling, I’m not retarded. A fuck is a fuck. I don’t believe you and your chap make love because it doesn’t sound like he knows how, if he can’t make you happy. But you have to call a fuck a fuck. I don’t believe in using the word in everyday speaking, as an adjective, it’s just lazy. But a fuck is a fuck, darling, there are no ways around that.’

  ‘Okay, then,’ I say, twisting my mascara wand slowly out of its case. ‘Except none of it really matters because we don’t even … fuck any more.’ I say it, and hate it. Even though I know that Ben and I, on the rare occasions that we do still have sex, are only having sex, only fucking, it is not something that I would ever admit, to anybody. And yet I just have. Without love, it is just fucking. Suddenly it seems obvious.

  ‘But Lulu, how old are you?’ she asks.

  ‘Thirty-one,’ I say. For the first time in a long while I am not embarrassed to say it, because my audience is ancient.

  ‘Thirty-one and you still haven’t realised that a man’s looks mean close to nothing, darling? Don’t you know that yet? You girls, you silly girls! Looks stir you. Maybe handsome keeps you somewhere longer than you should be. Maybe it turns heads, like yours turns for Tom Harvey-Saint, hmmm? Don’t look so appalled darling, I’m old, I’m not blind. That’s why this “fancy” is such a good word, I do agree with it, although we didn’t use it in those days, but it suits its purpose when that’s all it is, just “fancy”. Weren’t you listening this morning, darling, during rehearsal? When my old monster says, “My first two husbands were as ugly as apes, and the last one resembled an ostrich!” Now there is some truth worth listening to! Dear Tennessee, he wasn’t all mad. Of course he was a screaming old queer and looks did move him, as they move all men, but darling, that’s for the animals.’

  ‘I don’t understand what that means, why would she call her husbands ugly?’ I ask.

  ‘It means who cares how they look, really? It’s the curse of men that they care so much about looks, it’s what makes them so desperately simple. But a woman should see past it. You must never, never, just love a man for his looks, darling. A man will always need more to him than that. A man should be loved for his character.’

  ‘I’m not just with him for his looks!’ I lash on the mascara as angrily as I dare, but still she doesn’t flinch.

  ‘If you say so, darling. So what’s he like, your chap? What’s wrong with him?’

  I pause. And then I think, to hell with it.

  ‘Do you really want to know? He’s not affectionate. Our sex life is practically dead. He always thinks about himself before he thinks about me. I want somebody that I can put first, because they put me first. It doesn’t work if we both put him first … because then nobody is thinking about me …’

  ‘I completely agree, anything else?’ she asks.

  ‘He won’t tell me that he loves me.’

  Quiet. The CD has stopped playing. Even the heater doesn’t make any noise. It’s as if the whole room is stunned into silence by my stupidity.

  Somebody walks past outside the room, presumably towards the kitchen. Dolly doesn’t say anything, and suddenly I am mad. She coaxed it out of me for fun, and now she’s going to use it against me. The blood rushes to my head, and I open my mouth to shout, but as I do she says, ‘Oh Lulu. Poor Lulu. You’ve got one of those. My second husband’s brother was exactly the same. It’s such bad luck. My second husband was ugly like a fly, all tongue and eyes and long skinny legs. But rich, so ri
ch, and I was taken with him for a while. He’d do this dance to make me laugh if I felt sad. One day he danced, and then he proposed marriage. I said no, but then I was sad, so he danced again to cheer me up, and I changed my mind and said yes. He was more upset than me when I refused him, but he still danced. It was a quick wedding in a church in Boulder, Colorado. Just us and the minister. But then he took me to Denver to meet his family. And that’s when I met his brother. He was an inch shorter, an inch wider, his eyes were a shade darker, his face an angle squarer, his legs a muscle fuller. He was beautiful, with hairs on his chest that poked out of the top of his shirt and I was overcome by him for a while. But it was just looks, darling, just infatuation, you get that?’

  I nod my head.

  ‘So anyway, he was one of them. One of these boys whose daddy wasn’t nice to their mummy, who didn’t think he had to kiss her. He just wanted to be a man, with men, because then he didn’t have to care about anything but sports. And because my second husband was a little skinny, a little goofy, a little bug-eyed, he had never been a man’s man, never spent much time with his father, and he had learnt to appreciate women in spite of his father’s behaviour towards his mother. His brother did not. His brother was one of the worst, one of the ones you must always look out for, Lulu, because they are the very worst kind. The most painful kind. And they will damage you. And you’ve got one …’

  ‘Well?’ I say, scared to listen but scared not to.

  ‘He hadn’t realised that girls are as important as boys, darling. Can you imagine that? He hadn’t allowed himself to see any value in the feminine, as any man must who is to love wholly and properly. He just thought it silly, and emotional, and ridiculous. He didn’t respect his mother, he learnt that from his father. Only a man who appreciates the warmth and the strength of being held by the woman that loves him can love you wholly in return. Otherwise, well! They will never respect your value. My mother used to say, “If a man can’t kiss his mother, don’t take him as a lover.”’

  ‘But why are they like that? Why don’t they want to like women?’ I ask, baffled.

  ‘Oh Christ, darling, I don’t know – because it’s easier not to say most things than say them? And not to feel most things than feel them? Because it’s effort and men are lazy, and emotions terrify them more than tidal waves? But the worst thing a man can inherit is a father who doesn’t respect his mother. A man has to love his mother, and love his father, to know how to be. Otherwise it will ruin them for women. They’d have been better off with one parent gone than that. We all look up as children and learn our lives before we live them, darling. Of course that’s not to say we can’t learn other things along the way. Don’t ever waste your time on a man who isn’t even going to try and open up, darling. It’s like fucking a corpse: unless you’re sick, it’s futile. Hell, we all grow up eventually. How old is your chap?’

  ‘Thirty-three,’ I mumble.

  ‘Thirty-three? Thirty-three! Ha! Christ, darling, he’s an adult and it’s not your job to fix him. Let him rot!’

  ‘Oh my God, I can’t do that, that’s just …’ I search for the words but Dolly interrupts me.

  ‘Lulu, do not waste your life wasting his with him. I won’t allow it! What kind of silly girl sticks around for some thoughtless, careless, unfeeling toad?’

  ‘But I love the toad!’

  ‘Oh for goodness sake, am I ready to go? I can’t bear this drivel any more! Toughen up, Lulu, for all our sakes. See him for what he is. Don’t be some damned man’s cushion. You’ve got a life to live! And at some point every woman needs a man that knows how to love and loves her back. I believe that. It might not be fashionable, but it’s true. Are you going to sit around with this toad who won’t love you, while all the other girls get the men that can?’

  ‘But what if he doesn’t know how to love me the way that I need him to?’

  ‘Then you make it clear, Lulu, as I am sure you have already. And if you mean anything to him, anything at all, he will do it. Let me tell you this, and it’s the easiest lesson a man can ever learn. A woman doesn’t want much. They say they don’t understand us, but any man who listens for one tiny minute will understand a woman. The problem isn’t us, it’s them. It’s staring them in the face. A woman, a good woman and not a silly woman – and you have to know the difference – will hold back the broken banks of the Nile for the man that she loves. She will fight off armies for the man that she loves. She will make him feel like a hero. And all he has to do? Show her that she is adored. It’s not that they don’t know, darling. It’s that some of them can’t be bothered, the ones who would rather play with their boys than with girls. And as time rolls on, darling, and the homosexuals come further and further out of their closet and Old Compton Street breaks its banks and swallows up half of Soho, then you’ll see. Those boys never wanted to play with girls anyway. A real man knows how to love a woman, darling. And a real woman wouldn’t stay with a man that doesn’t! Now, am I done?’

  ‘I don’t know, are you?’

  ‘I mean my make-up, Lulu, am I done?’

  ‘Oh, yes, yes you are.’

  ‘Good.’ Dolly pushes herself to her feet and walks heavily towards the door.

  ‘Don’t you want to see it?’

  ‘No. Not today.’

  She wrenches the door open and disappears.

  I clean my brushes, and flop down in her chair exhausted.

  I am nodding off when there is a small thump on wood and Gavin kicks the door open, with a hammer in one hand and a spirit level in the other, and a couple of nails between his lips.

  ‘I’ll come back later’ he mumbles flatly without the nails falling out, and avoids eye contact, ducking back through the doorframe and pulling the door closed with him. I jump to my feet and run after him.

  ‘No, wait, Gavin!’ I yank the door back open.

  ‘She said her mirror is crooked but I can do it later’ he says spitting the nails into his hammer hand, looking down at his feet. They are huge, his trainers are like clown’s shoes.

  ‘What are you doing now Gavin? Do you fancy a walk, some fresh air maybe? I think they are going to be upstairs for a while, I’m going to take a break and some company would be nice, can you sneak out for a sandwich?’ I don’t find it hard to ask him to come with me, I’m not scared of his indifference, the way I would be if I were asking Tom Harvey-Saint the same question. I’m not afraid that Gavin will say something spiteful and make me feel ridiculous and rejected because he has too much … character for that.

  ‘Tom not free then?’ he asks deadpan.

  ‘Gavin, you know what he’s like. And that room is small and you opened the door a little hard, yes you did! And you don’t know your own strength, and you sent me flying forwards and on to him. It was closer than I wanted to be, I’ll tell you that. Come on, take a walk with me! If I am willing to risk Covent Garden cobbles in these heels’ I gesture at my feet with my thumb, ‘it’s the least that you can do!’

  ‘I have a lot to do today …’ he says.

  I sigh and put my hands on my hips. I will not knowingly enter in to the persuading business with any other men. I’ve had enough of that for a lifetime.

  ‘But I do need some air’ he says deadpan, ‘so you can entertain me for a while Scarlet, on one condition.’

  ‘Anything, you just name it,’ I say.

  ‘Let’s not talk about Ben’ he says. Gavin looks me defiantly in the eye.

  ‘Now there’s a challenge!’ I say.

  ‘What do you say, are you woman enough?’ he asks, from way up Gavin high.

  ‘I think I’ve still got it in me!’ I say, ‘I’ll grab my purse.’

  Gavin checks his watch as we leave through the back door, and determines that we have an hour to kill.

  ‘Do you want to get a coffee or something?’ I ask, as we stare down Long Acre.

  ‘I thought we were going to walk. Let’s see some sights, give bad directions to some tourists.’ He looks about
seriously to see if he can spot any Americans to confuse, and it makes me laugh.

  ‘Well that sounds like my kind of fun!’ I say.

  As we walk without thought along the Strand towards Nelson’s column and the newly pedestrianised Trafalgar Square, Gavin tells me about the struggles they have had with Dolly until now, and how it is only this week that she seems to have settled down, and not been so aggressive. Apparently for the last six weeks she has been leaping down everybody’s throats; she threw water at her understudy Audrey, and has refused to allow anybody into her dressing room, not Tristan, not Tom. Only Gavin has been allowed in for maintenance. She has kept them all at bay until now. She spent most of her time taunting Yvonne, my predecessor, who would leave in tears nearly every night, her hands shaking a little more than yesterday, her eyes puffy and red with tears. Dolly didn’t like Yvonne, Gavin thinks because she was short and fat and old – he heard her refer to her as a hobbit. Gavin escorted Dolly up and down from her car to her room every day, but that was the extent of their contact. She came up to the stage for rehearsals, but then went straight back downstairs again, ignoring anybody’s efforts to speak to her.

  We cut down towards Embankment and through the tube station to the river. Jogging up the steps to cross the Millenium Footbridge at Waterloo, it seems we are heading for the South Bank.

  ‘She is certainly happier this week. You must be doing something right.’ Gavin shoves his hands in his jeans pockets as we walk.

  ‘Oh Lord I’m sure it’s not me’ I say, glancing out at the river, pulling a rogue strand of hair, that has stuck to my lipgloss, back behind my ear.

  ‘Why shouldn’t it be you, you are the only thing that’s different? Look, there’s a police boat’ he says, pointing down at a boat powering along the middle of the river sending plumes of white froth spraying behind it.