Material Girl

by Louise Kean

  My mum lives in Rottingdean village, in a house by the lake. There is a path that separates her garden from the rushes. People have been warning her about damp in her foundations since she moved in, fifteen years ago, but the walls haven’t fallen down yet. It is an old house, though, with dark wood beams and low ceilings. Gavin would have to come in on his knees or risk a crick in his neck.

  I get a taxi to Rottingdean from Brighton station, and somehow my mum does what she always does, and is standing at the front door of her house as my taxi pulls up. Her grey hair is still long and pinned on her head, her glasses have slipped halfway down her nose, and she’s wearing an old jumper that she gardens in, and wellies.

  ‘Hello darling!’ she shouts, grinning and waving, as I pull up.

  ‘Have you been standing there all morning, Mum?’ I ask over my shoulder as I pay the cabbie.

  ‘No, darling, I just this second opened the door. You know I can be a little bit psychic, Scarlet. I thought you might get that train as well.’

  I lug my bag along the short path, and drop it down at her feet. She opens her arms out wide and hugs me, hard and tight, like she’s counting my bones. I start to cry and she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t know yet, I haven’t told her, but it doesn’t matter. You are allowed to cry when your mum hugs you. That’s allowed. Eventually she whispers in my ear, ‘Silly stuff? Or is something wrong?’

  ‘A bit of both,’ I say.

  ‘Tea?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes please,’ I say, between sobs.

  She holds me at arm’s length. ‘You look skinny, Scarlet, have you been eating?’

  ‘Mum, I don’t look skinny, I look huge.’

  ‘No you don’t. Don’t argue with me,’ she says, picking up my bag and carrying it into the hall. The stable door is open and I can smell the flowers in her back garden, and the damp smell of shovelled earth.

  ‘Garden looks fabulous, Mum,’ I say, leaning on the table in the kitchen, staring out of the window.

  ‘Oh, do you think so? Thank you. Have you seen my peonies? Over in the corner?’

  I stare out, trying to spot some colour because I don’t know what I am looking for. I say, ‘It looks lovely.’

  I rest heavily on the table, my chin on my forearms, while she mucks about at the stove with the old kettle, tossing in tea bags like they are going out of fashion.

  ‘I like your skirt!’ she comments, as the kettle starts to whistle. It’s yellow silk.

  ‘How is the shop?’ I ask. My mum manages a shop in the village, in the mornings, that sells scarves and plants and picture frames and candles. She has been there for ten years, and it’s what keeps her in bread and bulbs.

  ‘Fine, darling, the same as always.’ She turns and smiles at me. ‘How is the big city?’ she asks, widening her eyes, rubbing dirt off her forehead with the back of her hand.

  ‘Oh it’s … it’s been a bit much, recently. You know I love it but sometimes you have to get away. You can never clear your head in town. You can walk, in Hyde Park, or Green Park, and think you’ve cleared it, but then you remember everything the minute you get back on the tube.’

  ‘Well, you know what I think, Scarlet, too many distractions. I love London, but not to live, not to be. It’s for fun.’

  ‘Maybe. How are the ducks?’ I ask, as I hear them throwing themselves into the lake at the front of the house and arguing in noisy squawks.

  ‘Oh they’re okay, darling. One of them got run over a couple of weeks ago, but the rest seem all right about it. Tim had a good cry, of course.’

  Tim is the man who lives next door. He’s never married. Mum goes to the cinema with him. Whenever anybody asks me if there is anything going on between them I say that, ‘He’s never married’, loaded with meaning.

  ‘How about you? Didn’t you cry?’ Mum is quite attached to the ducks. She has given them all names. One is François, one is Dave, and one is called Derek and she thinks he’s bisexual. It’s bizarre.

  ‘Darling, I’m not going to cry about a duck.’

  ‘Even if it died?’ I ask, standing up straight.

  ‘Even if he died!’

  ‘But that’s when you’re allowed, when somebody dies,’ I say.

  She looks at me over her glasses with concern. Her jumper is coursed with runs and she is wearing an oversized orange vest underneath that pokes its noisy colour through. ‘Besides, it was John, and he was the oldest by far. And one of his feet had been mangled and his eyes were red, and he wasn’t long for this world so it was probably for the best. I think it might have been premeditated actually. He was generally near the front of the line, but that day he hung back, and then just stopped in front of a four-by-four, and of course it was one of the old girls and she didn’t brake in time.’

  ‘You think John the duck committed suicide?’ I ask, accepting a cup of steaming tea and trying not to smile.

  ‘Yes I do, actually, so don’t laugh.’ She looks at me sternly. ‘Well, what do you want to do?’ she asks. ‘You look tired. Do you want a nap?’

  ‘I think so.’

  She passes me a pink wafer biscuit. ‘Eat this and drink your tea. I’m going to finish turning over that earth, so go to bed, and we can have dinner later.’

  And I do.

  I stay in bed all afternoon. I fall asleep straight away, but then wake often, my brain working overtime, trying to answer a thousand questions in my head that can’t be answered, to explain behaviour that refuses to be explained.

  When I get up it’s late, almost seven, and mum is cooking us dinner. A heavy dusk has settled around the house, and with it a silence punctuated by an occasional car, or François or Dave or Derek bombing in or out of the pond. My mother has no concept of fats or carbs, she cooks her roast potatoes in thick, greasy slices of lard, and eats the skin of chicken and turkey, and pork crackling. Her pasta is always soft, as are her carrots. Her meat is always on the rare side. She cooks things how she cooks them, and hates recipes.

  We chat about my brother over dinner, and how busy we’ve all been, the family excuses that we have all made that have kept us away from each other for too long. She tells me that the library in the village has been threatened with closure, and they’ve been having meetings about it but she always falls asleep halfway through. My mum tells me that seven families of immigrants have moved into the empty houses at the other end of town, and how some people have been terrible about it, but she saw some of the children by the lake throwing bread to the ducks and they seemed nice enough so she took them biscuits.

  ‘Not much English, of course, but then who are we to judge? I can’t speak Romanian.’

  ‘Neither can I,’ I say. ‘I’m not even sure where it is.’

  ‘Exactly, Scarlet,’ she says with a smile, as if I am actually very, very clever.

  By nine p.m. I am tucked up in an armchair in the dark little house, a cup of strong coffee sitting on the floorboards next to me, watching Morse repeats on the TV and the light fade to black through the curtains and over the lake. With the back door open and the sound of silence outside, it feels like midnight.

  ‘Shall we walk by the sea tomorrow?’ Mum asks me. ‘Come and meet me at the shop at lunchtime, you can post some letters for me in the morning, Scarlet, then we can go for a nice long walk so we deserve fish and chips.’

  By ten p.m. my eyes are closing again. Mum has poured herself two large glasses of white wine and now she is sipping a brandy. Her socks are old, her feet propped in front of her on her wooden coffee table. One of her big toes is making a break for it through a threadbare patch, the fibres worn gently down day-in, day-out by her old wet wellies, which have been kicked off by the back door.

  ‘I’m going to go to bed, Mum,’ I say, and sleep-stumble over to kiss her goodnight.

  She grabs both of my arms and gives me a hug. ‘I love you, Lulu,’ she says, with a hint of a slur.

  ‘I know you do. I love you too.’

  In the doorway I turn around, an
d ask, ‘Mum? Why do you call me Lulu sometimes? Instead of Scarlet?’

  She gurgles a cough and smiles, and pulls off her glasses clumsily so one of the arms bangs her nose.

  ‘It’s what my grandfather called my grandmother when I was a child, and he whispered to her that he loved her as she stood at the sink or the stove or sat in her chair. And it always sounded so sincere, coming from him. It sounded like love should.’

  I walk up the stairs and bat away a tear. I knew Ben was wrong. I knew I was loveable really.

  I sleep in late and have a long, hot shower, throw on some jeans and a T-shirt. I toss my head upside-down and blow-dry my hair without spray or mousse or serum. I apply a minimum of make-up – I’m not quite ready for the fresh-faced look yet. I still feel numb, but even today it’s better. It feels like months already since I last spoke to Ben. In my heart, I know, I am forced to admit that he is probably fine. No doubt he is watching Dude, Where’s My Car? … again. I’m not holding out hope for some strange and atypical romantic gesture. I don’t expect him to land on the doorstep bedraggled, with red eyes and a bunch of flowers and a thousand gushing apologies, reeling from some strange epiphany, realising the error of his ways and what I’ve meant to him all along, finally acknowledging how much there is about me to miss. That simply won’t happen. That is for romantic comedies. Ours is not that kind of story. Ben won’t come after me, on a horse, in a car, or on a train. I know that much.

  I see Mum now, walking along the beach towards me, trundling clumsily and without grace, grey hairs flying, huge sunglasses on to fend off the wind that makes both our eyes stream.

  We walk for a while. Mum folds her arms and looks out to sea, and I kick through shingles and throw stones sometimes.

  Without Ben, the knowledge of Ben, the idea of being in a relationship, I feel like I am on my own. But of course I’m not. I stand and stare at an old fishing boat bobbing about two hundred feet out. It looks empty. I wait for the wind to feel colder but it doesn’t. I wait for my eyes to water more than they normally would in this crazy wind, but it’s the same. I feel a shiver in my back, but it’s not fear. I remember how good it was with Ben, when it was good. I remember back to a time, very early on, maybe even before he left, when we did laugh and muck about, and there was genuine affection. Then I think, Imagine that, but fifty times better. Imagine that plus somebody actually loving me back. I can’t help it and the feeling surprises me. It’s exciting.

  We turn around and walk back towards the village rather than head into Brighton, and the pebbles crunch beneath our feet. The wind gusts suddenly and whips our faces and our eyes both stream with windy tears.

  I am wearing one of my mum’s big old jumpers, a scarf and gloves.

  The waves crash about angrily. There is an old man further up the beach with a metal detector, scanning for treasure in two-pence pieces. A young couple walk their baby in a pram and he pushes. Some kids in hooded tops skim stones at the water and occasionally at each other.

  ‘What are you scared of, Scarlet?’ my mum asks, as we climb over a wooden beach-break.

  ‘Rats. Alligators. Heights, sometimes. Flying, sometimes. Snakes. Getting old. Not having a baby. Not finding somebody who wants to marry me, or that I want to marry. All the usual stuff, I guess. Missing out …’

  My mum stares at me and I know she is thinking about Ben, but she doesn’t ask me the question. Instead she says, ‘Well, yes, a lot of people have babies and get married. But what about the other stuff? What if you miss out on something else, something just as wonderful? Maybe you’ll miss the right man, Scarlet, because you’re so scared of being left on the shelf that you shack up with Mr Wrong! Or maybe you miss out on the opportunity of a lifetime, of living in a place you never would have known, or meeting important people, having important experiences, because you were hemmed into some semi somewhere just because it’s where you thought that you should be? Just because that’s where everybody else seems to think they should be! But do they look so gloriously happy to you, Scarlet? Like they didn’t miss out on something? Because most of them look miserable as hell to me! Maybe there are things, other things, that aren’t worth missing, just because you think you need a baby and a man? I thought that things had changed, Scarlet, for young girls today, but maybe they will always be the same …’

  ‘Maybe I’d have missed meeting a crazy old drunken lady with too much to say,’ I put in.

  ‘Yes, or that …’ my mum replies, bewildered.

  Tired thigh muscles slow us up as we trudge up a hill of shingles towards the road.

  ‘Scarlet, I am determined that you won’t spend your life sitting at home changing the nappies of a baby conceived with a man you don’t even like much any more! Or that you didn’t much like in the first place! You are my daughter, Scarlet, and you are wonderful and stunning and strong. Don’t apologise for it!’

  ‘Oh, I’m not any of those things, Mum, I’m certainly not strong’ I say.

  ‘Yes you are. You are. And if no man fits the bill then so be it, and that’s just their bad luck I’m afraid!’

  ‘Okay, but then I don’t get to have somebody that loves me, or a baby, do I?’ As I say it I finally realise that it’s true. Maybe I really don’t get to have a baby and a marriage. Maybe it just isn’t meant for me.

  ‘Please don’t take this the wrong way, darling, but babies can be overrated. Some children grow up to be distant drug addicts. No, don’t look appalled, just listen to me, Scarlet. There is a lot of luck involved these days, in getting a nice child. Some kids drive their parents crazy, I’ve seen the programs on TV. They have to send them off to special camps, special wilderness camps in the desert, just to get them to stop spitting and swearing! And a lot of people just have kids because they are scared of being on their own, and so they end up with children like that! I bet they are wishing for some of that quiet alone time now! If you can get past that fear, darling, of being on your own, then you are halfway there. It really isn’t bad, you know.’

  I stare at her, shocked, but she just nods her head wisely.

  ‘You didn’t hate Dad, did you?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh no, Scarlet, you know your father, he isn’t hateful. He’s just distant. He was disinterested in me, we just weren’t right. I couldn’t think when I was around him. I just felt trapped. And of course I got lucky and had you and your brother, and I think I managed as best as I could not to harm you too much in the leaving process. And of course I worry that I hurt your father, that saddens me still, even today. But I made a mistake. He wanted that life, and I wanted a different one. And I know it might seem strange to you, with me living here, in this poky little house. But it’s my house, darling, and my thoughts, and my washing, and my dreams, and my films. Of course I am a little sad, that I never met a man that I could share those things with in the way that I would have liked to have shared them. Sometimes I think maybe I missed that man, when I was with your father, at home, cooking dinners? I don’t regret it, darling, because of you. But my life is still my life, and yours is yours. I love you but I’m not going to live my life for you. You are a very important part of it, of course, but it’s still my life. And I could meet somebody yet, down the road, tomorrow. I haven’t given up! But you can’t just live for other people, for your children. You have to have something for yourself as well, Scarlet, for you. You have to be happy, to be able to make them happy, I think. Dreams are dreams, and you won’t know until you get there if the perfect kid, the perfect family, was as much of a lie as Prince bloody Charming. Prince Thoughtful with a Nice Smile, darling, that’s what love will be. Don’t be scared, Scarlet, please.’

  Facing away from the wind our eyes stop streaming. The fish and chip shop has recently been renamed ‘Things Can Only Get Batter!’ There is a huge queue that snakes out of the shop and around the corner like a long and slippery jellied eel.

  ‘Let’s go tomorrow instead, it will still be there then,’ Mum says, frowning at the queue. ‘I’ve got toas
t and Marmite and cheese, that will do, won’t it?’

  I nod and smile.

  I stayed because I was scared. I jumped, at the zoo, because I wasn’t.

  I’m thirty-one. I’m only thirty-one! Everybody else can pretend it’s ancient, but it’s not. It’s nothing. I’m a baby. I’m not ninety, I haven’t lived yet! The papers can sell their scare stories to somebody else, I’ve got a long way ahead of me yet. And I’ve learnt some stuff too. Love is just making somebody else happy, being made happy in return. You can do that with laughter lines. I’m going to love somebody again. What else could be more important than being happy, if you are lucky enough to have the choice? I’m not going to be mean with my feelings, or scared to give them. I’m going to give them as honestly and freely as I can.

  As we get back to the house I hear my mobile ringing. I feel a nervous sickness, and look at the screen; it’s Gavin.

  ‘So … I called,’ he says sternly.

  ‘So you did. That was quick,’ I reply.

  ‘Was it too soon?’ he asks, but answers himself. ‘But I just thought, to hell with it – if you want to call somebody, you should call. You could have met a man on the train. I didn’t want to take that chance.’

  ‘I could have, I guess. But I didn’t.’

  ‘Was it too quick?’ he asks, hesitation creeping in.

  ‘No, Gavin. It’s nice that you called. It’s nice when somebody actually wants to speak to you. But … I’m not going to say yes.’ I take a deep breath.

  ‘I’m going to try and be really honest with you, Gavin, and even if it’s disappointing I hope that you’ll like me for it. I think that you are lovely, and strong, and funny, and dry. Christ, I think you’d protect me, you really would. But I don’t think we’d be lovely, as a couple, definitely not right now. I barely know you and I don’t know if you’re right for me, and I don’t know if I’m right for you. But even if we both feel like exploring it for a while, now is not the right time. My feelings are all bruised, and I need to take a while to get better. Please don’t think me awful for saying this, and tell me that I am wrong if I am, but a couple of things that you did, and that you said, well, they made me think that you have feelings for me, strongish feelings, already.’