Material Girl

by Louise Kean

  ‘And what does the crocodile eat for lunch, Megan?’ he asks her, widening his eyes.

  ‘Megan!’ She screams and laughs.

  Ben and I are both laughing as well, and the dad gives us a smile. It makes me feel self-conscious and I look at Ben. We catch each other’s eye and the laughing stops. Ben ambles away.

  ‘The penguin pool was designed by the Russian émigré Berthold Lubetkin in 1934. He also designed Highpoint apartment building in Highgate, one of the highest points in greater London,’ Ben says. ‘Its brand of modernism was unusually elegant and playful at the time, and is a reminder of how innovative the style must have looked when it first appeared.’

  We sit opposite the penguin house on a bench. The penguins all follow each other around the pool, sliding up and down interlocking ramps.

  ‘You see, I want that,’ I say to Ben.

  ‘A penguin?’ he asks, confused.

  ‘No. Megan. “What does a crocodile eat?” At least, I want that to be an option,’ I say, but staring straight ahead because I can’t look at him. My hands shake and my mouth dries up. Ben leans forwards and rests his elbows on his knees, holding his head in his hands.

  After half a minute’s silence, he says, ‘What do you want me to say, Scarlet?’

  ‘What you feel,’ I reply.

  ‘I don’t know … I just … I don’t know.’ He shakes his head.

  I gulp, and he hears it and looks up.

  ‘Do you love me?’ I ask.

  He stares at me sadly. ‘No.’

  ‘Why are you ignoring that?’

  ‘I don’t know …’

  ‘Why did you move in with me?’

  ‘Because … you asked, and I thought you’d get angry if I didn’t.’ He talks to his open palms in front of him.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, Ben! Is that all I deserve? Are we that far from honesty? Don’t you know what I went through just to be with you? Don’t you know how hard it was for me, watching you miss her?’ I lower my voice as an elderly couple walk past and give me a disapproving look.

  Ben doesn’t respond.

  ‘So you definitely don’t love me,’ I continue masochistically.

  ‘Yes, I mean no, I mean: I can’t say that about you, Scarlet.’

  ‘Do you even know what love is? I mean, if you loved Katie, why did you leave her?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I stare at one crazy penguin, out on its own, sliding up and down a ramp on its belly, squawking penguin giggles.

  ‘Then what else can I do?’ I ask him.

  I see him nod his head slowly.

  A bullet of fear fires in my stomach. Jumping up violently I exclaim, ‘Are you hungry? Let’s get pie and mash, you love that kind of food, come on, there’s a pie shop over there.’

  I trip towards it, turning around to make sure he follows me, and he pushes himself slowly to his feet and walks heavily my way. I order us two chicken and mushroom pies and mash, and he pays. I say thank you. We sit back down now, opposite pelicans. I glance down at my pie and wonder if I’ll even be able to stomach a mouthful. Ben’s is already half gone. Temporary distraction passed, I feel terrible again.

  ‘Do you think you’ve been fair?’ I ask him.

  ‘Maybe not,’ he says, shaking his head.

  ‘Maybe? Maybe?’ An angry heat shoots up my windpipe like a volcano rushing to explode, but he looks away, and for some reason, I don’t know why, I bite my tongue. I’m not going to get any answers. He has never offered them before, and he won’t volunteer them today. He doesn’t seem to think the last three years of my life deserves explanation, and it doesn’t matter how hard I press him, those answers won’t come.

  ‘So, this is it then?’ he asks me quietly. ‘No screaming argument in the street? No smashed plates?’ He smiles ruefully.

  ‘Ben, this isn’t a soap opera, this is real.’ My hands are shaking and I throw my plate full of pie down on the bench. ‘I’m going to go,’ I say.

  ‘Back to the flat?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes. Will you be able to stay at Iggy’s tonight?’ I ask.

  ‘Of course. I’ll come and get a bag later.’

  ‘Okay. Then we’ll sort out stuff from there. I’ll find somewhere else. It’s your flat really, not mine.’

  He nods his head.

  ‘Okay, then.’ I turn away as my lips crumble and I hold my breath to stop myself crying, and swipe at my eyes. ‘You don’t have anything else to say, do you?’ I ask as brightly as I can, giving him one final chance.

  He shakes his head and looks away.

  ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Bye.’

  I feel myself walking away. My feet are shaking in my sandals, and my hands are trembling and the tears are streaming down my cheeks. I see a wooden sign that says exit and I follow the green arrow on the pavement through a dark, thin deserted tunnel and out the other side, but everything looks unfamiliar, and not at all like it did when we came in. I look down at my feet and I can’t see the arrow on the floor any more. I am on my own. I glance behind me and I can just make out Ben, still sitting on the bench in the distance, his head back and angled towards the sun. I think about going back. But then I spot a small green exit sign, practically camouflaged, and a grey turnstile tucked away in the corner. As there is nobody around I muck about with it for a minute feeling useless and trying to get it to open, the tears still streaking down my face, until I eventually push the right way, and finally, finally, I burst out onto the main road. I see a lit cab and hail it straight away, and say, ‘Ealing please.’

  I am curled up on the sofa in my dressing gown, with wet hair and no make-up, and with the TV on although I’m not watching it, when I hear the key in the door.

  ‘Hey,’ Ben says in the living-room doorway.

  I turn to face him but don’t say anything. He shudders at the redness of my eyes.

  ‘I’ll just get some stuff, throw it in a bag, and go to Iggy’s.’

  I hear him grabbing things in the bedroom and I pad through behind him, and lean in the doorway with my arms folded.

  ‘Can’t you stay for tonight?’ I ask quietly.

  ‘No,’ he says, sitting on the side of the bed.

  ‘Why not?’ I ask.

  ‘Because I know how this goes, Scar. I’ve been here before. You’ll hate me being here tomorrow morning.’

  And I think, no, you haven’t been here before. Not with me.

  Scene II: Like Steak

  Monday. The flat feels peculiarly empty as I move down the hallway and into the kitchen, and yet it is always this quiet, this still, when I get up in the mornings. Ben has generally left for work, but he has never left for good before.

  I pour too much Alpen clumsily into a bowl, and push it around with a spoon until it is sludge. I force myself to swallow two mouthfuls before I start to retch. I sit it on the table and pad through to the bathroom calmly, throw up the toilet seat and stick my fingers down my throat. Nothing comes. I tickle my tonsils cruelly, and one mouthful of Muesli quickly chases the other up my throat and into the toilet bowl. I gag three more times, and my stomach manages to coax up the glass of water I had twenty minutes ago. The tears stream down my cheeks silently at the heaving, painful exhaustion. I brush the hair away from my face and splash cold water on my cheeks, surveying the damage in the mirror above the sink. I feel like calling Ben, but of course I can’t, despite the fact that even an argument would feel good at this moment, and its familiarity would be comforting. Arguing with Ben would mean I am still half of something. Standing in my quiet flat on cold bathroom tiles in bare feet, shivering in my knickers and vest, I feel stark and exposed and horribly lonely.

  I manage to make myself up as usual, I am a professional after all. I collapse into unprompted tears four times in the hour it takes me to get ready. I take the decision, mascara wand in hand, to be realistic about the prospect of streaming eyes throughout the day, and apply one slight streak of black to each set of lashes.

  I call Helen on t
he way to the station.

  ‘Hello,’ I say.

  ‘Hey,’ Helen replies.

  ‘How is Jamie?’ I ask, before she can say anything else.

  ‘Yeah, he’s okay. I saw him. He called me and asked me to go around to his mother’s house: Christ, Scarlet, when she opened the door I knew she would have punched me if she could have gotten away with it. And he’s got Everton posters up on his wall! Doesn’t Ben support Everton?’

  ‘Yep,’ is all I say. I can’t bring myself to admit anything about the zoo to Helen yet. The words aren’t even stuck in my throat, I haven’t even assembled them into a sentence in my head that I could say out loud and which wouldn’t crumble halfway through the telling.

  ‘So I sat on his Everton duvet on his single bed and he showed me his scars – the cuts weren’t too deep although he’ll need some physiotherapy, because he severed the nerve that runs to one of his fingers or something. But that’s NHS, so that’s okay. And he wants to start up again, Scar … He told me that he loves me and he thinks that I need him, and he doesn’t expect anything from me and that we should just have sex and see …’ Helen’s voice trails off.

  ‘What about Nikki with an “i”? And Steven?’ I ask.

  ‘I think she’s off the scene. He told me she was and I think I believe him. I saw Steven last night, he came around for dinner. We’ve just got such a history, Scar, I don’t think I’m ready to give that up yet, and then of course he ended up staying, and even though we didn’t do anything, really, he was still there, this morning, for coffee and toast … I don’t think I am ready to not have him there for toast, Scar, I don’t think I choose that.’

  At least Ben and I never got up at the same time. The only ritual we will miss is the Evening Standard on the kitchen table. He’ll just have to buy it himself instead. Our breaking up will at the very least cost Ben forty pence a day.

  ‘Okay, but Helen, you sound a little confused, and fair enough, but think before you do anything else, with either of them, because you can’t do both, not now, after what’s happened. You know that, right?’

  ‘Maybe …’ she says.

  ‘No, you can’t! Somebody has to ring the bell and say that you have all lost! Helen, you can’t just drift with this stuff, it’s too important. You owe it to all of you, even cheating Steven, to make up your mind. Look how easily people get hurt! Look how much it hurts them! Jamie tried to kill himself, for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘But that was just poetry, you said that,’ Helen argues, sounding a lot like a smoker who is about to watch her last pack of cigarettes get thrown in the shredder.

  ‘Yes, but he still did it. It’s bad luck, you got a beautiful seventeen-year-old poet more interested in sonnets than shoplifting, but that is still your bad luck, and how he feels is still, partially at least, your responsibility, if you are going to carry on doing what you are doing, Helen. You can’t just say “Not my problem”, can you? Everybody’s heart is our responsibility, the minute we say hello to them! It’s not just about how you feel, Helen. And it’s not just about how pretty he is, and how flattering that is! You need to leave Jamie alone. He’s just a kid, and he’s too young to be learning half of what he’ll learn if you do it to him again. He’s told you as much himself!’

  ‘I know! But Christ, Scarlet. He is so pretty!’

  ‘Pretty isn’t enough,’ I say.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Helen asks after ten seconds of silence. ‘You sound tired, and a bit weird, a bit spaced out or something.’

  ‘I’m okay, I’m … I’m okay.’ And still, I can’t say it. ‘I’ll call you later, Hel,’ I finish, hanging up the phone.

  I check my watch as the tube rushes into Tottenham Court Road station, which was my intended stop, but it’s barely nine fifteen. I don’t stand up and relinquish my seat to the hovering hordes. The doors zip open and closed like a transparent sandwich bag, locking me in, so I stay where I am and ride the train a few more stops to the city.

  The glass has already been replaced in the bus stop, and scrawled on as well, in fresh black ink. Cassie and Kylie were here, apparently, and Cassie loves Johnny, and Kylie loves Christian, and they both hate somebody called Julie ‘the pig’ Sergeant.

  I sit outside Katie’s office again, but I’m too late to see workers filing one after the other through swing doors that revolve importantly and at speed. City people start work at strange and ungodly hours. They can probably watch breakfast TV at their desks. Some of them even finish work in the afternoon, at four or five o’clock. They must all have hobbies, or go to the gym a lot. Otherwise what would you do with that amount of time?

  I’m not even thinking about Katie, particularly, as I sit here at the bus stop. I am profoundly aware of a sense of my own relief. Two large sacks of guilt have been lifted from each of my shoulders, as if Ben had slipped rocks into my jacket where shoulder pads should be, and they’ve just disintegrated into dust. He can go back to her now if he wants to, and nobody will hate him for it – not his friends, not his mother, not me. My stomach lurches, and I feel sick, but I’m not in the way any more. Maybe they were meant to be together and I just ruined everything, like a fly, in high heels, in their ointment? If I wasn’t so numb I might shake so violently I’d sprain joints.

  Instead of focusing on the traffic as it coughs and wheezes past me, I picture Ben. He is bound to be at work. He won’t have taken the day off, calling in with a sad tremble in his voice, professing ‘personal problems’. I wonder where he is, exactly, now, at this very second? At the till perhaps, or in the warehouse, or standing in front of a Widescreen TV laughing at Dude, Where’s My Car? … again. I can’t phone and find out. It makes me feel like I’ve been demoted, from top security clearance to ‘need to know’ information only. Maybe Ben is already thinking about somebody else. Even the idea that he might be picturing somebody other than me, with a knot of excitement in his belly, is like an ulcer in mine. It feels like a bloated sulphur sickness that reeks and swells and rushes foul air up my windpipe and threatens uncontrollable meltdown. I can’t even let myself think about it, for one second more, and instead I find myself dreaming him dead. It surprises me that it’s less painful to think of him that way than to think of him falling in love with somebody else. But that is what I will have to do for now, for today at least, and cross my fingers that by some nasty twist of fate a truck doesn’t veer off the Broadway and smash up Dixons and everybody in it, making me feel like I jinxed him. You have to stay alive today, Ben, while I think of you dead. It’s one last favour, please. I think maybe that’s how I can be so sure that whatever love I had has turned bad. Some people say if you love somebody you just want them to be happy, with or without you, but I don’t feel like that about Ben. I can only think of him loving me today, or his version of loving me at least; the kind where he didn’t quite say it and didn’t quite do it. Anything else burns – and yet, as much as I know that it will hurt when tomorrow or next week or next year I decide I am ready to confront the possibility that he will have told somebody else that he does, perhaps, love them, I still know that nothing will ever hurt me like the denial I have been drowning in this last while. As painful as facing up to future possibilities might be, I am still over the worst of it. And I hope that in time I will be able to deal with all of the rage that is building up inside me for him, swelling like blood behind a clot. I hope that it will disperse itself eventually, naturally, without any need for anaesthetic or surgery. I hope I hope I hope. That’s got to be a good sign …

  I sit outside Katie’s office for an hour, looking up at the building’s windows and wondering which one is hers. I can see small figures moving about behind them, but I couldn’t tell you if one of them was my own mother, the distance is too great. I wonder if Katie was the first person Ben called, to tell her we were finally through. I haven’t learnt this much about anything since I crammed for my exams. Feelings should be policed. I’ll never be naïve again. Like your virginity, once it’s gone, it’s gone. The
major difference, of course, between then and now, is that I aced my GCSEs.

  A sheet of the Standard crunches along the pavement and sticks itself to my leg as I try to kick it off. The wind is wrapping it around my calf and I shake myself wildly rather than just lean down and rip it away. I can tell by the layout that it is the review section. Tonight is the first night of previews for the play. It doesn’t feel like anything to do with me now. The cast and crew seem to have melted away in the last twelve hours, unimportant and unrelated to my life and what’s happening in it, and yet without them I know I wouldn’t be sitting here, feeling lost. These ridiculous theatre people, all bursting with emotion and strange passion, demanding I confront my fears and my failings and my dead-on-arrival relationship. Maybe if I had taken the Andrex job I had been offered last week instead – two days on a set in St Albans with a mum and a little boy and seven puppies – I’d be going home to Ben again tonight? In fact I think that I know I would. But this was my fifth choice, my fifth road and choice and path out of lucky seven, and this time I took it. I don’t know what made me so brave yesterday. I don’t know if I’ll be that brave again, if choices six and seven present themselves so obviously.

  It’s grey today, and cold. I shiver in the bus stop as an old lady with black and grey steel-wool hair and skin the colour and consistency of the best dark chocolate sits down heavily next to me and gets out a clump of orange knitting.

  The needles begin to click quickly and don’t pause for respite. She isn’t even watching her fingers. She stares across the road, just as I do. Perhaps her ex-boyfriend’s ex-wife works in that building too, and she has been sitting here for forty years, wondering when the right time would be to go and apologise to somebody who demands no apology? Perhaps she is knitting a huge banner, in orange, that she will drape across the main road when she is finished so that everybody knows that she is sorry too. I am struck with an electric shock of clarity at the absurdity of my situation, like sparks flying from her knitting needles and burying themselves arrow-like into my goose-pimpled skin.