by Louise Kean
Audrey says it again, to Gavin, who is standing in the middle of the stage looking ridiculous in Dolly’s purple turban.
‘What’s going on?’ I mouth at him, tapping the face of my watch. It isn’t eleven thirty yet, and generally they wait for Dolly to rehearse Dolly’s scenes.
‘Tristan’s having a panic,’ he mouths back, but then looks away.
Tristan has covered his eyes again at the front of the stage.
Gavin reads lines back at Audrey, who hams it up for all she is worth.
‘Sally was trying to prove she was a generation younger than she was and thought she could get away with it,’ she says, smiling at Tristan theatrically. He gets up and walks out. Gavin walks off backstage. Audrey stands in the middle of the stage and looks around for somebody to impress, but nobody comes. She sits down quietly on the chaise longue.
I follow Gavin and call after him, but he is moving too quickly. I call out his name again, but by the time I reach the bottom of the stairs he has disappeared completely.
Tom comes round the corner to a round of applause and screaming girls in his head. He is wearing a crisp light-blue shirt with a stiff collar and the top two buttons undone, and well-cut dark jeans. He has a jumper tied around his waist. He looks like he’s walked off a runway.
‘Have you upset simple Gavin?’ Tom asks, sidling up towards me.
‘No. Maybe. I don’t bloody know, and he’s not simple,’ I reply, trying not to be affected by the light sting of his aftershave on my senses. It smells like Penhaligons, dignified and manly.
‘Nice outfit,’ he says, raising his eyes and giving a little whistle. I am wearing a navy blue polo shirt, a white pleated knee-length tennis skirt, and navy Mary Janes with white heels. I’ve got a string of long pink pearls beneath my collar, and my hair hangs heavily down my back, tousled and finger-dried. I’m wearing my heartbreak lipgloss again; it just seems to go with everything these days.
‘Do you know when Dolly is coming in?’ I enquire. I have a pang as if I haven’t seen her for a while. How much gin will she have knocked back today?
‘She’s not due in until two apparently, she’s had to see a doctor this morning.’
‘Oh my God, why?’ I ask, a sick feeling flooding my stomach.
‘Oh, nothing apparently, she just moaned a lot in the night and now she wants some valium or something. So … we find ourselves with some time on our hands.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ I say.
‘Why, what have you got to do?’
I stand and think. ‘No, you’re right, nothing really.’
‘Good, let me buy you lunch then.’ Tom stands above me and gives me a cheeky smile. His eyes are deep and dark, and they sparkle with a dirty evil. I think he has a fan club. I think there might be whole websites devoted to him. And in spite of myself I can understand it.
‘I just ate,’ I reply.
‘Then you’ll eat again,’ he says, and grabs my hand, pulling me behind him and then pushing me up the stairs in front of him. I can smell his aftershave and it’s making me giddy.
Walking down and towards the Covent Garden piazza, I can’t help but feel like I’ve been dipped in gold or draped in diamonds. It is one thing to get stared at by builders and cabbies and couriers, but quite another to walk somewhere with Tom Harvey-Saint. His blue shirt cuts crisply through the murky browns and drab reds of the tourists. It is still warm, for September, and we turn right at the piazza and head towards the sandwich shops behind the Strand.
Teenage girls look at him, women stop and stare. Well-dressed men, i.e. gay men, follow him with their eyes and smile. We don’t talk, but he places his hand on my back and guides me through the crowds of tourists milling around on the cobbles, staring at jugglers and mime artists and comedians.
‘Street performers, how depressing,’ he whispers to me. ‘They always try too hard. And I bet they don’t pay their taxes.’
I am silently appalled, and yet utterly overwhelmed by the attention we receive as we walk through the square. There are wolf whistles, which I ignore, of course, because I don’t know if they are for Tom, or me, or both of us. One thing is for certain: I have never felt quite so admired as I do right now, and I think I suddenly understand a little something about Tom. If I am confused by the way the world treats ‘pretty’, what must it be like to be him? He is crass, and rude, and arrogant. But everybody loves him on sight. I wonder who he would be if he didn’t look the way that he does. I wonder what parts of his personality got subdued, overlooked, because he didn’t need to do much more than shave in the mornings to have the world love him.
We grab crayfish and rocket sandwiches and two bottles of water from Pret a Manger, and a chocolate brownie to share, and Tom pays for them all without a word.
‘There is a square up here, behind this church, that I go to sometimes,’ he tells me.
‘Behind a church?’ I ask, arching an eyebrow with surprise.
‘Sometimes I even confess my sins – if you’re a good girl I might just let a few slip today.’ I look at him for a beat too long, and then turn away. I hear him chuckle.
‘I don’t mind sitting on the grass if you’ll sit on this,’ he says, offering me the duck-egg blue jumper hanging loosely around his waist. He smiles. I am amazed how easily he affects me. My willingness to cut beauty a break and forgive all previous offences is disturbing.
I cross my legs in front of me at the ankles, eat my sandwich and sip at my water. Tom inspects the grass quickly for mud, and then lies down in a model pose, propped up on one elbow, feeding himself his sandwich greedily with the other hand. He closes his eyes and faces the sun, and we sit in a warm silence. The square is half-full, and anybody who isn’t reading or talking seems to be staring at us. And I thought I got my fair share of stares on my own.
‘The sun feels good, doesn’t it,’ he says with his eyes closed, face angled towards the sun.
‘Yep,’ I reply as nonchalantly as I can.
‘Imagine you’re on a beach, Scarlet, in some little bikini, or maybe even topless – do you go topless, Scarlet?’
‘Sometimes,’ I say, taking a large bite of my sandwich as an excuse not to talk.
‘I love the way women’s breasts shine in the sun, their nipples dark brown from the heat, there is something so natural about it.’ I can feel him looking at me and I refuse to look back.
‘You look at women’s boobs on the beach, now there’s a surprise,’ I say sarcastically, trying to draw that line of conversation to a close.
Tom coughs, and pushes himself to his feet. ‘I’ll be back in a minute, nature calls’ he says, and darts off towards the street. I sit back in the sun and concentrate on forgetting everything, relieved that I put factor twenty moisturizer on my face this morning so I can sit here exposed but guilt free.
After five minutes Tom lands back down beside me and takes a slug of water.
‘Everything okay?’ I ask him.
‘Why shouldn’t it be?’ he asks smugly.
‘I don’t know, because you are you,’ I say, still facing the sun with my eyes closed.
Tom props himself up on his elbow. ‘Scarlet, I’m going to say something and I don’t want you to jump down my throat.’
‘What?’ I ask, ready to jump down his throat.
‘You seem sad. You look sad. I mean, you look great, but also sad. And nothing is more attractive on a woman, on anybody in fact, than a smile.’ To prove it he smiles at me from beneath his dark fringe. I look away.
‘So are you?’
‘Am I what? Sad? A bit, yes.’
‘Because you’re not having any sex?’ he asks earnestly.
‘Oh my God, what is wrong with you? You seem all normal and almost nice and then you say the weirdest, strangest things!’
‘What? What did I say? I’d be sad if I wasn’t having any sex, that’s fair!’
‘Okay, it’s partially the sex, but it’s bigger than that. I think I’m just confronting some stuff
that I have ignored for too long. And yes, it’s making me a little sad. My life isn’t what I thought it would be.’
‘What did you think it would be?’ he asks, addressing his bottle of water.
‘Undoubtedly happy,’ I reply.
‘Let’s play the truth game,’ he says, wiping his hands on a Pret napkin.
‘Oh my God, are we kids?’ I ask.
‘No. But it’s a good game. You can either ask me something, and I have to tell the truth, or I can tell you something about you that I think is the truth.’
‘Fine. Whatever. Ask me something,’ I say, looking around the square for something else to do.
‘Do you really go topless?’
‘Yes, sometimes. Only in private. Not on the beach.’
‘Why not on the beach?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do your nipples go dark brown when you do?’
‘Yes. My turn. Have you ever told a woman that you love her?’
‘Yes.’
‘That wasn’t your mother, or your grandmother, or some other old relative?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you mean it?’
‘As much as I can, yes. Right, my turn.’
‘Fine, tell me something then. This is getting boring,’ I say, hot and bothered and flustered and pissed off and ready to leave.
‘Okay, you think too much. About love and all that shit.’
‘Nice,’ I say, refusing to really listen.
‘And you over analyse everything, and when you do that you kill it,’ he continues matter-of-factly, like I should know this already.
‘Okay, but has it ever occurred to you that if you aren’t happy you should find out the reason why? Hmmm?’ I ask him, like he’s the class dunce.
‘Maybe it’s the constant questioning, Scarlet – the “Oh my God, am I happy? Am I unhappy? Does he love me, doesn’t he love me?” that actively makes you unhappy, have you thought about that?’
‘I don’t think that’s true.’ I don’t want to hear any more. Why is everybody so determined to tell me how I should behave?
‘You should just stop thinking so much. Just live it.’ Tom sits back, satisfied with himself.
‘Women think, Tom. That’s what we do.’
‘And that’s why men leave you. Or don’t love you. Most men just want a simple life.’
‘Then pick a simple woman,’ I say, jumping to my feet and walking off.
I hear him call my name once, but that’s it.
The first months that Ben and I were together were wonderful, when he opened up to me, and seemed happy to see me, and wanted to see me, in fact. I thought I’d found something. But then the door started to close. Initially his feelings were a wave pouring out and over me, it was like some kind of relief for him to talk. It was never dramatic or overly analytical, but it was open and it was honest. I believe there are things that he told me that he has never told anybody. He told me how he felt when his mother left and how it felt when she came back. He told me how he coped with being lonely by making lonely the best way to be. But then, a few months after he’d left Katie – her name still whispered like the word ‘bomb’ on a jumbo jet – he just stopped talking. Something happened, I don’t know what, but Ben just closed off. We carried on, but every day with him got harder, like I was pushing a ball of hay up a hill and it was gathering straw and dirt and grass and getting heavier and heavier. I feel like Ben let me walk a few steps ahead of him and then watched as I turned one way, and he decided to turn the other. One night, he breathed something in, and it was something bad, and that night he decided not to love me. Maybe it’s that simple.
I walk briskly up Long Acre towards the theatre, noticing that I only get half of the attention that I received when Tom was by my side. I reach into my bag for my purse.
‘Standard?’ my old guy says, still in his overcoat, in spite of the heat.
‘So what have you got for me this afternoon?’ I ask, smiling.
‘Paper, dear?’ he asks, volunteering a folded Standard.
‘Yes, of course, but what else?’ I ask, confused.
‘It’s forty pence, dear,’ he says.
I feel rejected.
‘Yes, I know that it’s forty pence, but what else? I mean, you usually say something or … you say something to me, don’t you? I’m not going mad, I haven’t dreamt it. You say stuff, like you said “Thoreau” the other day, and I had to look him up on the computer, and he was a writer, an American writer, and you said that to me.’ I am almost desperate for him to agree. I am not going mad, but he looks at me like I’m an idiot.
‘Okay,’ I say, passing him my forty pence, ‘I must have been mistaken.’
He hands me the paper, folded in half. ‘Sometimes things are that simple,’ he replies.
I look up at him with a smile. ‘I knew you couldn’t stop yourself! Ha!’ I say, and walk off, aware that I sound like somebody.
Sometimes things should just be simple.
I grab my phone and call Ben.
‘What?’ he asks, instead of hello.
‘I am officially calling you to tell you that I am coming home early, tonight, on a Friday night, in case you are cooking food, or there is football on.’ I smile. That was easy.
‘Oh, I’m going to the pub for a few after work, but I shouldn’t be too late,’ he says, sounding a little bewildered.
‘Okay, well, that’s cool, I’ll see you later on.’
‘Okay, bye,’ he replies, confused.
‘I’m spending the evening with Ben tonight,’ I tell Dolly as I strip off her make-up. It is six o’clock and she has been tired all afternoon. She was up in the middle of the night with pains, she said, and the doctor had to prescribe her codeine. It has made her woozy.
‘Good,’ she says, her eyes closing in the chair. ‘Try tonight, Lulu.’
‘I will, I will,’ I say.
I even stop and buy vegetables on the way home, and chicken. I am going to eat a proper meal, the type that my mother might cook, and have one glass of wine, just one, and be civilised and grown-up and responsible. And maybe Ben will cry off from the pub early, because he knows I am at home, so I’ll cook a little extra, and then we can watch sitcoms and laugh, and maybe talk a little as well.
By nine o’clock Ben hasn’t come home, so I turn on the radio while I make dinner. Ben has it tuned to the same station wherever he goes. In the car, in the house, at work. The same songs, dad rock, everywhere, and all the time. I retune it quickly – it’s my house too – and find a golden-oldie station. Buddy Holly sings ‘Love is Strange’. I chop mushrooms and hum along. There are violins. Love and violins are synonymous, aren’t they? Except my violins are playing sad songs. I need joyful violins, like Buddy Holly’s.
Two hours later I am crying, but it’s not my fault, they aren’t real tears. I have been watching a makeover marathon on cable TV. Selma, forty-two and twenty-three stone, lost her husband in a mudslide when they were on honeymoon in Venezuela. She broke both her legs at the same time, and because she is so heavy she has been having trouble recovering, and then she lost her job. After that she was evicted and now she is living back at her mother’s, except her mother is really ill, too, and probably won’t make it to Christmas. But Selma decides to leave for two months anyway, even though her mother might die while she’s gone, because it will be worth it, she says. So when they come to pick her up in a limousine bigger than the trailer she and her dying mother live in, it’s like she might be saying goodbye to her mum for good, and they both cry, a lot.
The following week they staple Selma’s stomach so she can only eat soup, and give her liposuction, veneers, hair extensions, a tummy tuck, a nose job, a breast reduction, and false nails. And she isn’t allowed to look in the mirror for those entire two months, and they don’t let her call home either, so she doesn’t know if her mum is dead or not, but apparently that all just adds to the suspense …
So two months later they do the ‘re
veal’. She looks beautiful. They’ve sucked about three stone off her, and she’s lost another two herself. Her mother, who is still alive, barely recognises her. They hug and cry, but Selma can’t hug her too tight because she has still got bandages on under her cocktail dress. But she is beautiful. Selma can’t stop looking at herself in the mirror. Her mum cries so much when she sees her, and I wonder if it’s because she’s nearly dead, or because her daughter is suddenly beautiful.
This is the third episode I have watched. They all just seem to get more tragic. But look how they look! Look how they have been transformed for this one moment.
I mute the TV and lay my head back on the sofa and wonder why it means so much to look in the mirror and see something wonderful when you’ve never seen it before? Is it because we think it will make people love us a bit more than they already do? Is it because it makes us feel that we inch a little closer to love? Or that maybe we’ve just found a shortcut?
I turn off the TV at one a.m., turn off the lamp in the living room so it’s dark, and stare out of the window. It’s noisy, the late bars are just chucking people out to the clubs. It’s a clear night, and I am distracted by what seems like a shooting star. I think it must be a CIA plane, or a satellite crashing to earth. But then I see another one, and another. People on the street below start to look up as well, as the stars shoot across the sky. There is a shooting-star storm outside my window. If Ben were here he would say it’s like the Day of the Triffids, and we should cover our eyes. But Ben isn’t here. At two a.m. I crawl into bed on my own.
Scene IV: The Heart Must Pause to Breathe
Saturday. I squeeze my eyes open just enough to register the numbers on our Mickey Mouse alarm clock. If you actually set the alarm it sings ‘It’s a Small World After All’ in a squeal so high-pitched it affects fishing channels and diverts whales up the Thames towards Richmond. So obviously we don’t set it. I forgot and set it once a little while ago and it caused mayhem! Ben uses the alarm on his mobile phone to wake him up every morning. I hate the noise that it makes, like a pulse that grows steadily louder and more menacing, thudding through me until it makes the walls and my bones shake. Although it doesn’t wake me it consistently penetrates and ruins my dreams. That tinny beeping pulse tolls in at seven a.m. every morning, and it always means that Ben is leaving. Ben never ignores his alarm. I am more likely to encounter Lord Lucan hiding under our duvet with one finger to his lips ‘shushing’ me not to reveal his whereabouts than I am to find Ben snoozing his phone to spend more time with me between the sheets.