Material Girl

by Louise Kean

  Dolly opens one eye comically to look at me, and then closes it again. I circle highlighter at her temples.

  ‘So you are basically saying that you hurt men? Is that right? You used them?’ I don’t feel like softening any blows today.

  ‘Often I did, I suppose, I did use them, but not once they loved me, that is plainly wrong.’

  ‘But you used them before that? And that’s not wrong?’

  ‘Yes, darling, but I couldn’t help that. They kept hurling themselves at me like lemmings off a cliff, I couldn’t get out of the way quick enough some days! Ha!’ She slaps her thigh and kicks off her shoes like a girl.

  I shake my head. ‘You see I just don’t think it’s necessary to hurt people like that. You can take responsibility for your actions. You can be honest enough to walk away before it hurts them too much. It’s just … wrong to do anything else.’

  Dolly grabs my hands as I move towards her with lip plump, and claps them together, sandwiched between hers. I can feel her age in the cold wrinkles in her palms pressing on my skin. She smells of mothballs and lavender and soap and alcohol.

  ‘But Lulu, you say it like it’s deliberate! Do you know how very few people are malicious and cold and mean?’ She shakes my hands to make me understand. ‘People don’t want to hurt other people, they just can’t help it. We are animals, darling, life is going to be painful. I never really meant to hurt anybody, but I did. Christ, I did, over and over.’ She throws my hands away and shrugs. ‘And I got hurt too, Lulu, oh yes. It didn’t kill me! And who says it’s so bad, just because it makes you cry? Who says crying is so bad, when something really hurts? Good heavens, Lulu, what do you think love is? It’s just habit, darling, it’s just habit. Finding somebody who makes you laugh, and doesn’t kiss like a circus ape, and weaving them into your life like yarn. What did you think it was going to be, darling? Obsession? Obsession isn’t healthy. Or trying to please somebody who can’t be pleased, like your chap by the sounds of it. And trying to make somebody care about you who doesn’t want to, like your chap. But Lulu, that’s not your fault, darling! You just don’t fit him. Not loving somebody is just not accepting part of their character, and he doesn’t want to accept part of yours. Love isn’t the unexplainable at all. It’s easily explained! Declaring to somebody, ‘I don’t love you’, or ‘I don’t love you any more’, like some kind of metaphysical argument that needs no definition. Well, Christ, darling! That’s not an answer to anything. What is it that you think love is?’

  I stand and think and search for an answer. It’s not even liking somebody a lot, but then it kind of is. I think about the people that I can say that I love. I love my daddy because he is my daddy, in spite of his distance, perhaps sometimes because of it? Knowing that he loves me anyway but doesn’t find it easy to express makes me want to protect him from anybody that would try to force it out of him. I love Richard because he’s my brother and because he is so easy to love, and he is obviously so in love with Hannah, and his boys, and his life. Richard met Hannah at sixth-form college, they were childhood sweethearts and their love happened the way that it does in romantic films. They fell for each other before they learnt about cynicism. They sat next to each other in A-level maths. They became friends. They sat in Richard’s Ford Fiesta outside Hannah’s house in the evening and talked. They only ever really stood out to each other, but they are a team. Richard is the only real-life example that I have, that I cling to desperately, to prove to me that romantic love actually can happen, and be real.

  I love my mum so much, because she’s my mum, and because she didn’t really leave. She took me with her, every night at ten p.m., and every weekend, when she could have just walked away and enjoyed herself and kicked up her heels and travelled the world. I always knew, maybe more so because she didn’t live with me, that she loved me. She didn’t have to call me every night, but she did. She didn’t have to get tears in her eyes every Sunday night when my dad came to pick me and Richard up, but she did. But I don’t really know what it is about their characters that means I love them or not, because just knowing that they love me isn’t enough to love somebody back. I don’t know how to choose to love somebody or not. I love Helen because she is my best friend and she has a good heart, and she makes me laugh, and she has always been there, always. I just love the people I am supposed to. Maybe they don’t do everything I’d like them to, and maybe I don’t either, for them. And maybe me and my daddy wouldn’t even be friends in another life, maybe we’d drive each other crazy. But I love him because he’s mine. Dolly looks at me expectantly. She is waiting for an answer. What is it that I think love is?

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t.’ I shake my head and feel like a fool. ‘And I don’t know what to say when Ben won’t say that he loves me, or can’t say he loves me at least.’ I feel my shoulders slump, the fight draining from me.

  ‘Oh no, darling, you got it right the first time. It’s not “can’t” say it, darling, it’s “won’t”. Know that, if nothing else. It seems to me, Lulu, that you are infinitely loveable. It seems to me that you are welling over with love for this chap. I don’t think there is anything about you that he can’t love, Lulu. You’re not a wet fish of a girl, you’re not a silly girl, as silly as you might occasionally seem. It seems to me, Lulu, that you have a bit of a fire to you, a lot of life. It’s not “can’t”, darling, it’s “won’t”.’

  ‘Okay, won’t. But what difference does it make, it’s the same result. Maybe he just doesn’t take me seriously enough to even try to love me, or think that he might. There is something about me, or him, or who he was, or who he is, that stops him seeing us as a real thing, with possibilities and a future. I don’t know if he’s serious about me, can you believe that? After three years, Dolly! But we live together, how can he not be serious?’

  I am standing, tired and helpless, in front of her. She reaches behind her and yanks out a cushion, and throws it on the floor.

  ‘Take those stupid shoes off and sit down, darling,’ she says. ‘You need the rest.’

  I do as she says. I cross my legs like a little girl in assembly and stare up at her.

  ‘Oh Lulu. Men can do many things and not be serious about the girl they are dating. They can even marry a girl, standing next to her at the altar with a rose in their lapel and a top hat under their arm, and not be serious about a girl. They think it’s fine as long as they are getting what they want.’

  ‘Which is?’ I ask, desperate to know.

  ‘Often no more than somebody to fuck when they feel like fucking, darling. That is brutal, I know, but I believe it. Don’t forget that they are closer to animals than we are. Maybe that’s what your chap was doing with you, except now of course he doesn’t even feel like fucking, ha! That’s it. No more emotional investment than that. They’ll keep you at arm’s length and treat your courtship like something that is second, third, fourth, fifth on their list of priorities. Their friends will come before you, and their work, and their sports, so many things. Because they just aren’t taking you seriously. I’ve seen it happen to girls a hundred times, the girls like you, who loved somebody willingly and openly and tragically, really, darling. And of course it’s fine, darling, to not love somebody, to place them low on your list, if you both feel the same. If it suits both parties I mean. But you take your chap quite seriously, Lulu.’ She smiles at me sadly.

  ‘I do. I do.’

  ‘And he knows it I’m sure. And maybe he even hates himself a little too, for the way that he is treating you, darling, but that’s not good enough, because it’s his choice. If he spots for even one second that you might be in love with him, then a man who respects women would do the honourable thing. Step up to the plate and take it seriously, or walk away. Do you want to know what I think, in all my years, is the worst thing in the world, Lulu?’

  I nod my head.

  ‘To knowingly use a person that loves you. For whatever reason. For nothing more than amusement, or weekend sport. That is t
he difference! Right there, on the table, bang!’ She slaps the counter suddenly with a wide open palm, and it makes a noise that stings the air, and I jump.

  ‘That is a man who doesn’t care that he hurts you. We all hurt people unintentionally, Lulu, and it is forgivable. But to see it, know it, do it anyway? That’s the worst a man can do. Yes, the worst thing a man can do is treat a woman like weekend sport. Because he knows how much it hurts you, deeply. Especially you, Lulu, look at you, you’re like a pretty puppy.’ She takes my hand. ‘A woman will throw everything she has into making a man love her when he has no intention of doing anything of the sort. He doesn’t even care, really, if she comes or goes. He just uses her for exercise, and he thinks, Why not? She is here, there is no gun to her head.’

  ‘But Dolly, I don’t understand – you say that people loved you, and you hurt them …’

  ‘But I always knew, darling, when a man had fallen for me and I didn’t feel the same. I always respected them enough to be honest. Anything less, in matters of the heart, is for the animals. A man who doesn’t respect a woman who loves him lacks the essence of a man. He isn’t a man. He’s a boy who never grew up. He shouldn’t be fucking he should be painting pictures, running in the school yard in shorts, modelling characters out of plasticine to fight with. And no more than that.’

  I take a sharp involuntary gasp, and picture a vial of free grey paint stuck to a magazine.

  ‘Now, I should get on. You’ve kept me gassing and I shall get in trouble, Lulu.’ She gestures with her hands that I should get up.

  I push myself to my feet and lift each leg, examining the soles of my feet that have already turned grey around the edges from the dirt on the floor.

  Dolly looks at herself in the mirror today, tilting back her head. When she raises her hand to pull back the skin beneath her chin I see that she is suddenly trembling again.

  ‘You know I’ve always felt the envy around me, Lulu. Some days you enjoy it, some days you want to run from it screaming. But what I wonder, often, now that it is gone, is how my life might have played out differently, if I hadn’t looked the way that I did. If I had been just a little bit less beautiful – it’s not as if it had anything to do with me, it was all luck, decided in the womb – but if I’d looked like my sisters perhaps. Where would I be now?’

  ‘Where are your sisters now?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh all dead Lulu’ she says quietly. ‘We always kept in touch with letters and cards, and they all stayed close to my mother’s house except me, but once mother died, we lost our focus, really. She was our scaffold. She was the thing we built our dreams on. We had a glorious time when we were young, she saw to that, I’ll tell you about it when we have the time. But you know, when she died, I didn’t know anything about it for three weeks. I didn’t get to go to the funeral. My sisters couldn’t track me down you see, I was off filming somewhere, cavorting with some leading man whose name escapes me now, and of course they couldn’t wait, so …’ she shakes her head slowly, and stares at herself in the mirror.

  ‘Why are you doing this play Dolly?’ I ask. I want to protect her, what if they savage her? What if the critics rip her apart? Or worse, what if she collapses under the pressure and runs away?

  ‘It seems like a lot of effort, you seem a little tired, and … have you got enough money? Did you need to say that you’d do it?’

  I look in the mirror next to her and she stares, not at me, but at my reflection. Standing next to each other I wonder if anybody could think us related: she could be my grandmother, perhaps, or my crazy great aunt. We have the same nose at least. The same-shaped eyes. Of course hers are violet whereas mine are plain old Everton blue.

  ‘I have more than enough money, Lulu. I am staying at the Dorchester, I have a suite. I have my house in Santa Monica, and the villa in Stintino, both of them empty without me but I was always very wise with my money, because a woman should be with her own money. She should spend other people’s freely, but be careful with her own. But I divorced four times of course, yes, four. And I had the luck to marry some very rich men. Very rich men, Lulu. Of course not Charlie, he was a church mouse, but the rest were all independently wealthy. But it’s not the money that attracted me to them. Nothing should ever be about the money, if you can help it at all. It’s the passion. You can’t hide from it. Of course it’s an effort, at my old age, but I have never been one for fear. Sometimes a girl has to be brave, Lulu.’

  Dolly brushes herself down and inspects herself one last time in the mirror. She tugs back the skin at the side of her eyes, and I get a glimpse of a smoother, younger version.

  ‘Thirty-five was my prime, Lulu. They say it’s your early twenties, but they are wrong. It has to be on the inside, and on the outside, to really knock their socks off. You have to wear it well. When I was thirty-five, Lulu, well. There wasn’t a head I couldn’t turn. I knocked everybody’s socks off then.’

  As she walks towards the door I see her hands shaking at her sides and I want to grab her from behind and hug her and stop her going up there, to the stage, to be laughed at by Tom and Arabella, and manipulated by Tristan.

  ‘Did your daughter call?’ I ask as she opens the door.

  ‘No … she didn’t. But it’s the damned hotel, Lulu, I am sure of that. She is obviously trying and they just damn well muck it up. I shall speak to the manager this evening, if I am not too tired, and give him a piece of my mind.’

  ‘Do you miss her?’ I ask.

  ‘Who, Chloe? Oh, yes, I suppose I do. The older I get of course, and isn’t it always the way. We don’t talk that much to be honest, Lulu, she doesn’t have much to say to me. I was never really anybody’s mother, never wanted to be, until now … It made me feel old. I just thought that I should have a child to try it, I suppose, like taking a drag on a joint that’s being passed around, you don’t want to miss out on something that everybody else is trying. But Chloe was living with her father and his new wife by the time that she was six, and I’d been on the valium for three years by then, so I don’t remember most of that. No, I was never much interested in mothering, but now I see that it must be quite something. To pass on the few lessons that life might have taught you …’

  She is almost out of the door when she asks, ‘Do you speak to your mother much, Lulu?’

  ‘As often as I can.’

  ‘And do you love her?’

  ‘Oh, very much. Very much. I can’t really breathe if I think about her … not being around, when I need her. I can’t even think about it. She has always been there for me. Even when she left, she was still there.’

  Dolly swallows loudly.

  ‘You should tell her that, Lulu. Pass me that water.’

  I hand her the glass. It is water, because it is mine. I think I see surprise when it touches her lips and it isn’t the gin that she was expecting. She is used to her water with a little more kick these days.

  But still, she takes a swig, then says, ‘Lulu, will you pop to the bathroom and get me a tissue, my nose is cold.’ She reaches up and grabs it for effect.

  ‘Of course,’ I say, even though she is halfway out of the door, and I have to push past her to get into the corridor.

  I come back from the toilet and the door has been closed. Pushing it back open I catch Dolly chucking a bottle of gin hurriedly into her bag. Her cheeks flush, and her hands seem to shake even more.

  ‘It’s so damned warm in here, isn’t it? Are they trying to kill me? I have to stand on that stage and project with a throat red-raw from air-conditioning, for that ridiculous little man with his strange notions of nudity.’

  ‘Actually, you are getting a little hot on your upper lip.’ I reach for the powder.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Lulu, just damned well leave me alone! Stop playing with me, can’t you see I’m old now, and ugly, and you smell like a brothel and you whine like a toddler – and you’re just making it worse!’

  I take a step back, but she won’t meet my eye, and I run out of
the room.

  Coming out of the toilet that smells of fresh vomit, and with swollen eyes and mascara stained cheeks, I bump straight into Arabella in the hall.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, and hate myself. Apologies and tears, I am pathetic after all.

  ‘So you’re the Make-up for Dolly?’ she asks. Her voice is cool and wealthy. She reeks of blue blood and horses and tea parties and pheasant shoots and all-girls’ schools and privilege. She wears her stupid mismatching clothes because she is too rich and too well-bred to care. I look like a tramp next to her, all mascara and fashion, trying too hard to please. Arabella has always pleased everybody immediately, or dismissed those she hasn’t with an arched eyebrow and a sneer. She looks at me now, like she could afford twenty of me.

  ‘Yes, I’m Make-up,’ I say.

  ‘Well I’m going to stick with Greta, I think it’s only right. She’s a lovely old girl, and I think it’s terrible that they’d even dream of replacing her.’

  ‘Fine with me,’ I say, sniffing.

  ‘Plus, you know, I don’t like my make-up too heavy.’

  ‘Oh fine,’ I say, and push past her, but she grabs my arm and spins me around.

  ‘Look, we both know how it is,’ she states in a measured tone.

  ‘What on earth?’ I glance down at her fingers digging into my arm.

  ‘With Gavin,’ she says, coolly.

  ‘With Gavin what?’

  ‘Oh come on. Look at you. Look at me. We both know that Gavin’s not really … permanent. If you want him, well, you can have him.’ She lets go of my arm and crosses both of hers. She eyes me up and down like the head prefect of an all-girl school, assessing a first year with the wrong shoes.