by Louise Kean
‘What do you mean, look at you, look at me?’ I shake my head in disbelief, I have never known anything like it.
‘Look, it’s Scarlet, isn’t it? We both get what we want. I mean men. I’m sure we go about it in different ways, but it’s not like we have to take whatever’s left over … I have my charms and you have yours. And Gavin is sweet, you know that, so if you want him, take him, I’m practically done with him anyway.’
I can’t believe what she is saying. I feel like an arctic wind just blew down the corridor and my features have frozen in disbelief.
‘I think, Arabella, that Gavin has feelings for you, and I don’t know what you are talking about with regard to me wanting him or not wanting him or whatever, and no, I don’t always get what I want, and this whole conversation is strange, and …’
‘No, he doesn’t have feelings for me,’ Arabella interrupts, ‘significant or otherwise. We both know that’s not true, Scarlet, let’s not lie, between girls. Gavin barely knows me. He knows what I look like, yes, but that’s about it. He doesn’t know what I think about, I don’t know, religion, or politics, or Ethiopia.’
‘What do you think about Ethiopia?’ I ask.
‘Oh I don’t know, it was just an example. That they’re hungry, there’s a famine, etcetera, etcetera. You know what I’m driving at. He doesn’t care what I think any more than I care what he thinks.’
‘I don’t know why you’re saying this to me but I think you’ve got the wrong girl and …’ I start to walk away again.
‘Don’t play dumb, Scarlet,’ she says to my back, and I stop walking. ‘We’re both grown, adult women. We can tell it how it is.’
‘And, just for clarity, tell me, how is it?’ I don’t turn around to face her, speaking over my shoulder instead.
‘If you want him, have him. I’m done. That’s all I’m saying. I thought you’d appreciate my candour.’
She brushes past me, and I smell her flowery old-fashioned perfume as I stare after her. I remember to remember that it’s not just men who break hearts.
Gavin jogs heavily down the stairs at the end of the corridor holding a tin of paint. He is walking towards Arabella and I see him smile. She stops him and turns them both, like a pro, so that her audience, me, can see their profile as she kisses him hard on the mouth, and proclaims loudly, so the whole corridor, me, can hear, ‘Let’s have dinner later, Gavin darling.’
She saunters off up the stairs and Gavin watches her go, before turning around and walking back towards me with a half-smile.
‘Hi,’ I say.
His smile fades. ‘If you’re looking for Tom I just saw him upstairs,’ he announces, walking past me, ducking his head instinctively so he doesn’t hit a low pipe.
‘Will you stop that Gavin, please?’
He stops a few feet in front of me. His back blocks out the light from the bulb hanging ten feet away. He’s like a walking eclipse.
‘You were the one holding his hand,’ he says, swinging the tin of paint in his own hand.
‘Gavin, he was sleazing all over me, that’s all. I thought that we had cleared that up? And I would have thought that you, of all people, could grasp the kind of man he is. It was a complete misunderstanding. Please don’t keep going on about it. He was just singing really loudly, before, I was bound to look up.’
Gavin practically melts in front of me, and I feel a shudder down my spine, as though my feet are suddenly wet with the water of his feelings, and I should be raising my skirts and tiptoeing away. Ben always fights back, always accuses me of something, he never wants to believe me, but Gavin does. He turns around and I shudder again as a wave of unspoken feelings emits from Gavin to me. I realise that he hasn’t just been trying to make me feel better. He likes me more than he has been letting on.
‘Okay, I’m sorry, Scarlet, but Jesus, it’s this place! These people – they make you act weird. I’m really sorry.’
‘Honestly, Gavin, don’t think about it, don’t even worry about it, it’s fine.’ All of a sudden I want to run away. But I want to protect him too.
He smiles a big faux Scottish smile. ‘So are you going out to dinner with Arabella tonight?’ I ask. I can’t help myself.
He looks bashful for a moment, perhaps even guilty, but then he looks like a man again.
‘It sounds like it, and I always have to pay. I don’t mind but she orders champagne, and, you know, she earns ten times more than me.’
‘You’ll never get a beautiful girl to buy you dinner,’ I say.
He shrugs and smiles. ‘Well, I have to go and paint Tom’s door dramatic red,’ he tells me evenly, the same old Gavin tone. He starts to walk off down the corridor.
‘Don’t go, Gavin!’ I shout.
He turns towards me and looks confused. ‘I’ll only be ten minutes, it’s just one door.’
‘I mean tonight, with Arabella, don’t go.’
‘Why not?’ He tries hard to look me in the eye, but then he looks away at the last second.
‘Because. Because! Because she can’t just click her fingers and have you jump. You’re bigger than that. No pun intended. But it shouldn’t matter how beautiful she is.’
Gavin smiles.
‘What?’ I say.
‘But it does. Look at her,’ he replies, like I should be impressed with him or something because of it, and it makes me mad.
‘Oh for Christ’s sake, Gavin, grow up! See past it. You’re not an animal! And it’s not impressive if she’s a horrible person, no matter how nice she is to look at!’ My cheeks are burning red with my outburst.
Gavin looks away, embarrassed, and so am I. I have gone too far.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
‘Do you want to have dinner with me instead?’ he asks quietly.
‘Me?’ I say feeling like I just threw myself down a hole.
‘You,’ he replies.
‘Oh. No. I can’t.’
Gavin bristles and goes red. ‘Right. Fine. I have to go.’
He turns and walks away.
‘No, seriously, Gavin, I have other plans and …’ I call after him. His stride is so long he is almost gone, but I can still see that the tops of his ears have turned red.
‘See you later!’ I shout after him, but he just keeps walking. I slump back into Dolly’s room without knocking, but Dolly isn’t around. I am glad, I don’t want to apologise to her when it was her doing the shouting, but that is what I’ll be forced to do when she turns up, because she’s old, she’s talent, and she’s got an ego the size of Russia. I spot a piece of paper stuck in the centre of the mirror and I lean in to read it, my eyes reflected above it:
Lulu,
I get weary, sometimes, with the world, and with myself. You’ll see, one day, and then maybe you’ll remember and understand this stupid old woman, and forgive me. The world isn’t always warm, you see, like this dreadful room with its dreadful pipes, when we are in it.
I’ve gone to find you biscuits.
Dolly x
I tear the note off and put it in my purse.
The door opens and she is carrying a pack of digestives.
‘I had to steal them from the understudies, and they probably won’t eat for weeks now. Ha! But I think we need some sugar.’
‘Shouldn’t you be upstairs?’ I ask.
‘Yes, I should, and I’m going, but I wanted to give you these first, Lulu. Take them.’ She thrusts them at me clumsily
I lean forwards to give her a hug, but she turns and walks away, shutting the door behind her.
Scene III: The Truth Game
I have barely finished flicking through Elle for the second time when the door flies opens and Dolly stumbles back in.
‘That was quick,’ I tell her.
‘I’m spent, Lulu. I’m exhausted, and that fool is driving me doolally, doolally I tell you! Take it all off again, Lulu, I’m going back to the hotel.’
‘Fair enough,’ I say, as she slumps down into her chair and drops her
rings on the counter, scooping up a dollop of hand-cream. ‘Shall I put a CD on? Have you got any others, or do you want Ella again?’ I ask.
‘Ella will be fine. Good music can stand repeat plays. It occurred to me, Lulu, when I was upstairs just now, that I meant to ask you: When you went home did you talk to your chap? Last night, when I sent you home to confront him? Did you actually confront him?’
‘There was no confrontation. Well, not that kind at least. Although there was a pasta … incident. But there was football on.’
‘So you didn’t even try, darling?’ she asks sadly.
‘No, well, barely. But he wanted to watch the football, there was nothing I could do.’
‘But you must try, Lulu. We must always try, in everything. And you say he wanted to watch football? Well he couldn’t have watched it if you’d, say, thrown a plate through the television. This is what I mean, Lulu, we must try, and try, and try harder! If something is to be wonderful we must all try harder to make it wonderful. I hear this damn foolish notion these days that if something doesn’t come utterly naturally, then it is too much work. Love shouldn’t be that hard, they say. What rubbish! What could be harder than love, day in, day out, when there is a choice there? But what can be more rewarding? You should try tonight instead, perhaps, Lulu?’
I sigh. ‘We’ll see.’
‘But you must.’
‘Why? What is it that’s so important to you?’ I ask, already exhausted at the prospect of trying to pin Ben down, again, to a conversation he doesn’t want to have and a truth he doesn’t think he owes me.
‘Well, now. It is important to me, Lulu. Because I don’t want you to be a silly girl who lets this fool get away with it. And because, in a way, you remind me of me. I like your glamour, Lulu. And I like your spirit. And I won’t let some damned man spoil those for you.’
‘Thank you,’ I tell her, and pull her hair back from her face, wiping her clean. The CD plays quietly in the corner.
‘Dear Ella, she smoked about one hundred cigarettes a day, you know.’
‘It’s amazing she didn’t cough up ash,’ I say.
‘Well, darling, so did Nat King Cole, that’s where his voice came from. Cigarettes aren’t all bad, especially if you don’t want to live to a hundred. Do you smoke, Lulu?’
‘Sometimes. Not often. Mostly if I’m drunk.’
‘I think you might like it, as a habit. It gives you a bit of time to yourself, during the day, these five-minute pockets of time just for you, dotted into your life at regular intervals, and it might calm you down a little, Lulu, stop you getting so flustered all the damn time.’
‘Do you still smoke?’ I ask, dabbing at the black mascara on her eyes.
‘Oh no, Lulu, not now, but I used to, all the time. Oh I smoked in public, Lulu, when it wasn’t fashionable for a woman to do so. But it empowered me, in a way. I think perhaps a little too much. This was in the Fifties, and the Sixties, when my hair was still dark, and so long I could wrap it around my throat like a scarf to protect me from the wind. It was down to my waist, almost black, and it always smelt, faintly, of those menthol cigarettes, and lavender. We all smelt of Lavender, my sisters and I. I told you I would tell you about them, didn’t I? Well when I was young, before Charlie took me to Los Angeles, we lived in Broadstairs, darling, by the sea. And my mother’s house always smelled of lavender, you see, there were bushes all around the house like a sweet-smelling insulation, keeping out the bad smells, Lulu, and the bad people as well. The wasps warned them off, they would sting the bad ones away. I stayed out of the sun, I was pale, with this long, dark hair. I had four sisters, Lulu, four. Imagine that! The fights were glorious in our little house, we all shared a room, and Eileen, my oldest sister, she would boss us about and the screams could be heard down the beach and beyond, across the water maybe! But I was the youngest, Lulu, the baby, and so everybody spoiled me and nobody wanted to upset me too much. We all looked the same of course, me and Eileen, and Lucy and Margaret and Anne. We all had our long, dark hair and our violet eyes. My mother used to say we were one egg split into five.’
‘But they weren’t all as beautiful as you?’ I ask.
‘Well, yes and no, Lulu. Striking, yes. But everybody always used to say there was something about me. I was the grand one, the dramatic one, sweeping into rooms. I knew the effect that I had. You must feel it too, Lulu. When you walk into a room, and you see one hundred sets of eyes flick towards you all at once like the breeze blew them your way. It’s a warm breeze, that’s for certain. But it’s still just a breeze. For a while I thought those eyes meant that I deserved the world, and should have it – But look how much everybody wants me, I thought. I am a goddess, and a goddess should get what she wants. But age teaches you that it is just not true. You get what you deserve, and beauty only deserves those glances. Anything more you have to fight for like the rest of them. But my mother always called me urgent, you see, and the boys always called me luminous. I suppose I practised it as well. I developed this lonely quality to my voice. A kind of arrogance, I suppose, because of being so spoiled, and being the baby. My mother always said that I was flushed with life and that is what really gave me my beauty, so even though as sisters we all looked almost the same, I had a look that was only mine as well. She said that I always appeared excited and a little out of breath. I had the look of a girl who had run all the way down the beach, desperate to find somebody, to tell them good news. That’s how she described me.’
‘It sounds like you were very close.’ I rest the hot muslin on her face and it makes her jump a little, but she doesn’t say anything, and instead takes deep breaths.
‘Oh, yes, we were very close. We were like a fairytale really. We lived in Broadstairs all that time, in the lavender house, and my mother, Winifred – but her friends called her Fred – was a tiny woman, with glasses that sat on the end of her nose as if poised to fall off. My sisters were all just older versions of me in temperament, and we were all just younger versions of our mother, truth be told. And she wanted us to do everything, try everything. We’d read poetry to each other and sing songs and dance. Men would come and call and we’d each go off for walks along the beach. Anne was the worst, sometimes two walks a day, with two different men! And sometimes we’d come back with sand in our hair, and sometimes not. And some of our neighbours would tut at us in town, but my mother would fix them with a stern stare and say seriously, “I have been a slut myself, so why not my girls?” She rolled her own cigarettes. Maybe one of these days I’ll show you. And when Charlie said he’d take me to LA, well she damn near put me on the plane herself. And there were no tears. Because nobody died, you see, Lulu. That was her motto, you know. “A woman should display strength and grace,” she said. “A woman shouldn’t topple in the wind.”’
‘What about your father, where was he?’
‘Oh, he left one day, and nobody really seemed to notice. It was better that way. I think the noise disturbed him, you see.’
‘And you slept with boys on the beach and your mum encouraged it? How old were you?’ I ask, surprised.
‘Oh, in my teens, I suppose. Eighteen, maybe. But it wasn’t sordid, Lulu, it was joyful. Life-loving. We had so much fun in those dunes, it was the start of life. Some people thought that life could escape you, in a little village like that, but you can bring life to you anywhere you go, it will come and find you if you want it to. The problem was that the boys didn’t always see it that way, as fun and life-loving and joyful, and they always proposed, to all of us. Of course, Anne fell pregnant, so she accepted quite early, but not the rest of us. And of course in those days most girls longed to marry, the boys couldn’t understand it, but we were never the sort, we were having too much fun with our mother in Lavender House. And it was always a mistake to ask us. Of course I did end up marrying, four times, but still. It was always a mistake to ask. I can’t count how many proposals I’ve had, more than there are Chinamen. And I always thought, why have you proposed, you
see? Just to keep me, just to trap me? Let’s just take what we can give each other and move on. You don’t have to give it a name, or make it permanent. It won’t be. You can’t be happy all of the time, you can’t live like that forever. And I’d mourn them, these men who weren’t always ready to move on, but my heart was still in the grave of one love affair when I’d start making eyes at another man. It nearly killed me, but I couldn’t help it, Lulu! It was all because I was beautiful. Oh Lulu, I was spreading havoc before I knew any better.’ She smiles sadly and it slips from her face as she falls asleep. I take off the last of her make-up, but she jolts upright about five minutes later as I whisper around the room tidying up. Pushing herself to her feet, she shuffles her M&S slippers towards the door.
‘My car will be upstairs. I’ll see you tomorrow, Lulu. Friday. For fish!’
I check my watch. It’s an hour before I am due to meet Helen for dinner. I look in the mirror. I look okay. I swipe ‘Heartbreak Blue’ across my lips and head for Charing Cross Road.
I spot her stickering books on a table. She looks even more unkempt than usual. Her blonde hair has formed a thicket on her crown, it looks like it hasn’t been combed or washed in days. Her cardigan has a hole which she pokes her thumb through. Her dress is pink with black and yellow flowers, buttoned up at the front. The top button is straining to burst. Her cowboy boots are scuffed and dirty and brown. The black around her eyes is the same as usual, with lashings of mascara. She has a layer of puppy fat that keeps her warm. A streak of cheap glitter is splashed across her lips. Her cheeks are more flushed than usual, she has gone crazy with cream blusher and she has a round pink circle, like an apple, on either cheek. I grab a book off the nearest counter – it’s Steinbeck, The Winter of our Discontent – and head over.
‘Oh, hi,’ I say, as if I am utterly surprised to see her, here, where she works every day.