Читать книгу Material Girl - Louise Kean - Страница 6

You know those days just before Christmas when there are lights everywhere, in Highgate village or anywhere in London? I don’t mean the orange and red neon glory lights of Oxford Street or Regent Street, with their torrents of swarming shoppers below who fill every spare inch of pavement, as those lights, unlike puppies, are just for Christmas, and not for life. I am talking about the branches of white lights that string across the high streets of villages, dusting the everyday with Christmas sparkle, enough to remind you that it’s supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year. Some of those dotted lights even shine out from people’s windows, the optimistic ones. I think they should leave those lights up forever, for every day of the year. I’d like a life like that. Those strings of cheap diamonds are like a shared and hopeful smile. They punctuate the functional with magic, and increasingly that’s what I feel slipping away. My magic reserves are depleted, like dwindling natural resources, and they need a little topping up. I need a world with a little more magic.

Rain spits at the tips of my shoes sticking out in to the alley, as I loiter inside the backdoor of The Majestic, leaning against a grubby wall. I could call Ben back. My phone sits in my hand like a grenade. I always call him back. Ben can leave cross words for hours, for days. It’s like he wears blinkers or has tunnel vision. I know that men and women think differently but Ben is like a computer.

The Ben that I recognise now is his reflection in a monitor, on his PC screen: he is mostly otherwise engaged with technology. I check his phone constantly. I hate myself for doing it – I know it makes me a cliché. The act of rifling surreptitiously through his texts when he isn’t in the room, while nervously listening for the sound of his feet padding down the hallway to signal his return, epitomises the change from ‘old confident me’ to ‘fresh and pathetic me’ like an exclamation mark. But I have found texts from her. They always end with a kiss. I sat outside her office for an hour once, crying. She organises events for banks. Ben never fails to remind me, subtly or otherwise, that it was he and Katie that were hurt by their break-up, as if they are an exclusive club with a restricted membership of two.

Katie. I have to whisper it, like a swear word in a nursery. Apparently my feelings at the time paled in comparison to how badly they both felt, even given his constant emotional yo-yoing back and forth, from me to her to me to her. Ben doesn’t think it was painful for me, as I tried desperately to begin a proper and exclusive relationship with him, this man that I had fallen in love with, as he sat and cried for somebody else, and I hugged him to try to make it better. They are friends again now, but I’ll never be Katie’s ‘favourite person’ apparently. Ben finds it easier to blame me for the breakdown of his relationship rather than the two people who were actually in it, and in a way I let him. I do feel guilty about her. I feel like being obsessed with her gives me a reason to stay with Ben. Leaving him now would be like kicking her in the teeth again, this woman I’ve never met. A part of me believes that Ben would like me to leave, so that he can go back to her and settle back into his old-man chair in his old-man relationship and just call me a ‘phase’. He can pretend that he didn’t want anything else, just for a little while.

Ben ‘catches up’ with Katie once a month, either on the phone or in person. When I tried to say that I thought that once a month might be a little excessive, he told me I couldn’t tell him what to do. I tried to explain that I wasn’t telling him what to do, but rather letting him know how his actions made me feel, and he told me, with irritation in his voice and a hateful exhausted look on his face, that I had to get used to it because it was going to happen whether I liked it or not.

I think that Ben would prefer life to escape him rather than acknowledge that he is terrified of getting in touch with his emotions, but I don’t want that. Happiness isn’t fear. Fear leads to hate, and hate leads to the dark side … I know because Ben and his mate Iggy watch Star Wars constantly – the DVD Special Edition, the Director’s Cut Four Disc DVD, the Special Director’s Cut Ten Disc Super Edition. Cue Darth Vader heavy breathing. But I’m not ready for the dark side. I can still feel the force, even if Ben can’t. And I’ve always been afraid of the dark …

I suppose I should acknowledge that Ben thinks he’s just fine. ‘Men don’t talk,’ he says, like that’s reason enough for us not to sort things out, not to be happy.

I throw my phone into my bag in despair. My head is hot but the rain cools the air around me as I feel my face crack and crumble like an earthquake in a desert, my make-up disintegrating as I start to cry.

I startle myself with a short sharp laugh of surprise.

Then I cry again.

The prospect of leaving Ben makes me shake. I cannot contemplate being without him, of how scared I am of being alone no matter how cowardly it makes me feel … I desperately grab in my bag for my phone again, as if I am suddenly on a ten-second deadline and if I don’t speak to him before the timer runs out our relationship will explode. I find it and claw it open, and hit his number.

I just need to hear his voice. I need us to say important things that cement our feelings for each other somehow, so that I can get through the day. Ben and I don’t discuss marriage or kids, because I don’t want to put too much pressure on him. But, then, I am thirty-one now and I want those things, and maybe he does too. Lots of other people do, so why not us, and why am I so scared to say it? I don’t have to goad him into loving me and then, and only when he tells me he is ready, will we be allowed to admit that we want babies. I am not going to be scared to say that I want to have children anymore! Maybe if I just say it then he will too …

It rings five times before he answers and I immediately say, ‘Ben, it’s me.’

‘I’m working …’

‘I want to have children.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I want you to know that I want to have children.’

‘Right …’

‘And?’

‘And what? I’m working …’

‘I am telling you that I want to have children.’

‘Well, yes, I suppose you do …’

‘Well what do you think?’

‘About what?’

‘About having children?’

‘I think I want to have them too …’

He sounds like he is searching desperately for the right answer on some quiz show, like Blockbusters: ‘I’ll have whatever will make her stop talking please, Bob?’

‘Soon?’ I ask. ‘Do you want to have them soon?’

‘I … I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.’

‘Well … what do you think about?’

‘What? I’m working.’

‘Yes, but I’m thirty-one.’

‘Right …’

‘I think about things … about marriage … and stuff …’

‘Right …’

‘What do you think about those things?’

‘I … I don’t know … Scarlet, I’m working …’

‘Oh, okay, do you want to talk about it later?’

‘I … I don’t know … maybe … another time …’

I want to cry. Again. I realise we haven’t even had a conversation. Ben has just deflected me. I kick my words at him like weak volleys to his chest. He doesn’t even have to move off his spot. He doesn’t even have to stretch. He just stands there and bats me away with ‘maybes’ and ‘I don’t knows’ and I don’t even challenge him for anything more. A stronger woman would punch that ball back out of his hands, make him stand three feet from the penalty spot, then fire it at his testes. But I am not that woman … I thought that I was, but then I met Ben. If one person shuts down eventually the other one does too. I kick like a girl now.

‘Okay, I’ll see you later then,’ he says, finishing the conversation off.

‘You can’t wait to get off the phone, can you?’

‘No, it’s not that, but I’m working.’

I can hear his mates in the store laughing in the background. I can hear that they are watching Dude, Where’s My Car? again.

‘But … but what about … I just … Okay, fine. I’ll see you later.’

The phone line goes dead.

I don’t know who is more scared, me or Ben? It’s like Halloween round at our flat. But it’s the prospect of staying with him as our relationship rots beneath us that scares me the most.

And what if there is nobody else out there for me? Helen always tells me not to be ridiculous when I say that, but I worry that Ben and I just don’t try anymore, and what will make that any easier with somebody else? Maybe I am just creating problems, but I have a head full of questions. Maybe he’s having an affair? Maybe he doesn’t like sex? Or intimacy? Or anything that means you have to be close to another person? This is the man I want to marry, a man who won’t even give me a hug unless I ask for it and sometimes not even then. Will we even kiss at the altar?

Of course, the thought that constantly lingers is: Why did you leave your wife if you don’t love me? Did you start loving me and then stop? Are you seeing her again? I know they didn’t do ‘public displays of affection’, or ‘pda’s’ as Ben once described them. I thought expressions like that were the reserve of eight-year-old girls. At the time I wasn’t even talking about a passionate kiss, I was asking him for a peck on the lips on a half-full Virgin train. But Ben won’t do public displays of affection, not on a train, not now. The obvious question is of course, why?

But Ben won’t ask the ‘why’ questions either. He says ‘this is who I am’, even if he knows it won’t make him happy. As long as he can’t get upset, then he need never ask ‘Why?’

I don’t want that life. I want a deliberate passionate honest time.

It’s my mother’s fault for calling me Scarlet.

You can’t give a child that name and not expect her to live …

There is a loud cough – somebody is lurking awkwardly at the end of the corridor and has probably heard my entire conversation with Ben, and has certainly seen me standing here crying like some pathetic soap-opera wife.

He’s large, he looks fleshy and heavy like a saturated sponge.

I swipe at my tears.

‘Can I help?’ he asks.

‘I don’t know, maybe – do you think anybody has a relationship where the man comes up behind the woman while she is, say, washing up, and puts his arms around her waist, and whispers in her ear, “You look gorgeous even when you are washing up”? Does anybody have that? Even after three years? Or ever? Or is that just in films? Is that too much to ask? Because that’s what I want. Do I want too much? And also, to have somebody who says nice things to me, like, “You look really pretty tonight”, or “You really make me laugh”, or just something sometime that is spontaneous, you know? That makes me feel wanted, or valued at least. Do men do that, anywhere? Or is that just in romantic comedies? Also, I’d like to be hugged in the middle of the night, and sometimes even woken up to have sex. Does that sound strange to you? Because I know some men who just aren’t interested, at all. I know one man in particular who has explicitly been told that it is very much okay to wake me up in the middle of the night to have sex, and I won’t be annoyed, or tired, in fact I’d love it! I would love to have sex with him in the middle of the night! I have actually told him that he can do that. But he never wakes up! Not only that, he never even rolls over and hugs me! We sleep in the same bed, and he never even hugs me …’

‘Do you hug him? Do you wake him up?’ the saturated sponge asks me directly.

‘I used to. I gave up. It felt like I was in the persuading business. And who wants to feel like they are persuading somebody to hug them? It’s degrading …’

‘Does this man, is this, your husband?’

‘Boyfriend,’ I whisper, ashamed and mildly appalled to be having this conversation with somebody that I assume is a new colleague. But then Helen always says, ‘Scarlet, you’d ask advice from the speaking clock if it would answer you back.’ I suppose I am hoping that soon somebody, anybody, might tell me what I want to hear. Until then I’ll simply add to the weight of various strangers’ experiences that I am amassing in my head.

‘I think that …’ I see his thoughts flash across his wide face like a red line that signifies a heartbeat across a monitor. I see him actually thinking about what I’ve said in an effort to answer it, and not just recoiling at the emotion of it all. He and Ben would not be friends. Ben would probably accuse him of being gay. Of course he might be gay, but he seems too big … He starts to speak, then stops, then starts again.

‘I think that if I was in bed each night with a woman that I loved, I would want to hug her, and kiss her, and … certainly wake her up if she was offering what … has apparently … been offered. I would certainly do that. And if I loved her, of course I would want to hold her. Who else do you get to hold like that? Not your mum, or your friends. Who else can hug you like that? I mean, not all night, a man needs sleep, but certainly I would want to, and would hug her … Oh Christ …’

I am crying again.

‘What’s your name?’ I ask, regaining control and sweeping a finger beneath each of my eyes to mop up my tears.

‘Why?’

‘What do you mean why? I’m not undercover police …’

‘Gavin,’ he says, with a degree of suspicion.

‘Okay, Gavin, who maybe has drugs in his pocket or some outstanding parking tickets? Do you think I should break up with him and go speed-dating? Except my best friend Helen said her cousin went and she said the whole process made her feel like she was a human iPod. You just keep skipping past really good songs, thinking the next one might be better …’

Gavin looks a little bewildered. His cheeks are flushed, as if he has just climbed three flights of stairs, or necked two glasses of red wine in quick succession.

‘I’m the stage manager,’ Gavin says.

‘Okay … does that mean you aren’t allowed to answer questions about speed-dating?’

‘I don’t mean to upset you again … or more … but you can’t be in here if you are nothing to do with the theatre and … I’d rather take it up the arse from a seven-foot convict with the nickname Big Greased Shirley than go speed-dating.’

‘My God! You’d hate it that much? Do you think that’s a masculinity issue? That you don’t want to be judged by women? I mean, it could be okay … some people say it’s fun … speed-dating … not taking it up the arse … but some people say that’s fun too … I’ve never … I mean, I’ve thought about it, but … I’m not that kind of girl … except what is that kind of girl, really? A girl who likes sex? That’s fine, isn’t it, today? In this century? Like when men describe a woman as “dirty” but in a good way, I always thought that meant taking it up the … you know … but then I found out it just means that she’ll smile during sex … or not kick you off. But also, I am allowed to be in here. At least I think I am. Like I’d just be standing here crying if not? Of course I could be just watching the rain and crying over my rubbish relationship … except of course it’s not rubbish … that’s unfair … and I’m not that pathetic. At least I’m trying not to be … or maybe I am … but I’m Scarlet White, I’m Dolly Russell’s new make-up artist.’

I offer Gavin my hand to shake, thrusting my Evening Standard back under my other arm.

‘Scarlet White? In the dining room with the lead piping?’ Gavin shakes but doesn’t seem in any way stirred.

‘Hmmm, just the half a mile short of funny,’ I say, eyeing him with suspicion at the cheap and quick jibe.

‘Okay, well Dolly won’t be in for a couple of hours yet – she’s a late starter, the first wave of pills and gin don’t break on her beach until noon – but that’s good if you want to have a look around, and I can introduce you to some people, the rest of the crew – the director’s downstairs freaking out about the karma of the curtain … it’s too heavy apparently – he says it could bring us all down …’

Gavin’s delivery is so dry it’s as if he’s reading his lines from a sheet of paper. I wonder if I’ll ever know when he’s joking. I don’t know whether to laugh or not now. He must be my age. He is twice my weight and height. He has that slightly ginger but just brown hair that suggests Scottish ancestry to me, although that’s unfounded as I don’t know anybody Scottish and never have. Still, Gavin looks like he could wear a kilt and toss cabers on BBC1 on Sunday afternoons.

He ducks expertly as we weave our way along a maze of thin grey corridors, and somehow he manages not to bang his over-large head on a thousand dirty pipes hanging from the ceiling above us. The pipes are so close together that if he wasn’t ducking so swiftly he’d actually be banging out a tune. Part of me wishes he’d stop ducking because I want to know how it sounds, although Gavin would end up with concussion. I skip to keep up in my heels, my purple skirt swishing silk at my knees, my legs in fishnets flashing beneath. We are moving at speed, Gavin’s stride is long, and I start to feel a little sticky in my black cashmere cardigan that crosses directly over my heart. Neither Gavin nor I speak for what must be a whole minute; it’s a long, strange silence like the ones observed on the radio on VE Day or September 11th. I feel us trapped in a moving, uncomfortable bubble, thinking desperately of something to say while trying to catch my breath. A very short man appears around the corner in front of us. I mean, he is clinically short. Gavin acknowledges him with a nod of his head, and as I hug the wall to let him pass I glance down and see that he is completely bald on top.

‘Goodness, I didn’t even realise! I should have read the play beforehand, I know, but it was such a last-minute booking … normally I work on film sets, TV commercials … I haven’t done that much theatre, or any, really …’

‘Didn’t realise what?’ Gavin asks as we turn the corner.

‘That there were dwarves in the play. Is it a fantasy? Or science fiction? I didn’t realise Tennessee Williams wrote that sort of thing as well.’

Gavin stops abruptly and looks at me, and I screech to a halt a couple of steps later and turn to face him.

‘What?’ I ask.

‘He’s an electrician …’

‘Oh …’

I see Gavin shaking his head as he starts walking again and I run a little to keep up, my heels clicking on the cold concrete of the floor, my back sweaty under my cashmere, my top lip prickling under my make-up, my hairspray starting to scratch at my head. I don’t think I have ever been this mortified. Gavin isn’t talking to me. Maybe he and the dwarf are really good friends, although they’d look ridiculous walking down the street together. In my mind I can only picture the smaller guy sitting on one of Gavin’s massive shoulders, perhaps in a jaunty hat and eating an apple … but I know that’s wrong. I decide to break the silence with a change of subject, terrified of how Gavin might choose to introduce me to the rest of the crew, especially if there are any more … electricians.

‘So Gavin, pretend you have a girlfriend …’

He stops and glares at me again.

‘What?’ I ask.

‘I do have a girlfriend,’ he says.

‘Oh. I didn’t mean anything by it, Gavin … Okay, well, moving on, what if you and your girlfriend were just sitting on the sofa one night, watching the TV, and she said to you, “Say something nice to me”?’

‘Why?’ he says, and I can’t decide if he is just irritated, or if he already hates me like Greenpeace hate Shell. Either way I carry on regardless – I can’t make it any worse.

‘Because she’s just had a miserable day, her feet really hurt because she’s been breaking in new sandals, she’s had a row with her dad about the importance of correctly filling out cheque-book stubs, and she needs somebody to say something wonderful. She needs to feel special …’

‘I mean,’ Gavin says, pushing a door open then turning back to address me, ‘why haven’t I said something nice anyway?’

‘Oh …’ That’s floored me.

He steps back to allow me to walk through the door before he does.

‘Exactly,’ I say. Exactly. I think my voice might have just broken.

The stage is in front of us, and all of the house lights are up. It is smaller than I anticipated, and apologetic without a spotlight.

‘I’m not having this conversation if you are going to cry again.’ Gavin talks over his shoulder at me as we stride along the aisle. ‘Plus, do you talk about anything else? Have you tried cracking a few jokes? Or is it just constant relationship angst over a mound of self-help books and copies of Cosmopolitan? Because if that’s the case I don’t think I blame this guy …’

I blink twice in quick succession. I am startled and affronted. I can talk about other things; I talk about other things all the time!

‘I can talk about other things …’ I say, sneering at him.

‘Well thank God for that,’ Gavin says, and stops walking abruptly behind a short Indian man who stands with his back to us while gesticulating wildly, his hands conducting an imaginary opera. Nobody appears to be paying him much attention, and a clove cigarette flashes wildly between the stubby fingers of his left hand, sprinkling ash and sparks onto his chocolate-brown suede loafers. He wears a dark grey suit and a black polo-neck, and has very thick and very high dark hair that seems to have been set in one of those old-lady hairdresser’s, an hour under the machine with a Woman’s Weekly and a word search, sucking on a boiled sweet, all clicking teeth and concentration.

Young people in jeans and Sergeant Pepper and Mr Brightside T-shirts mill around in front of him paying him no mind, while every couple of seconds somebody completely new appears and carries a large plank of wood precariously from one side of the stage to the other. Everything that could possibly be covered in material has been – a dark-red brushed velvet with a grey and brown pattern of twisted leaves. The stage needs sweeping. It is insulated with a thin layer of dust, broken up by discarded McDonald’s wrappers. I count at least five Starbucks cups that have toppled onto their sides like the drunks on Tottenham Court Road.

Gavin says, ‘Tristan’, but the little man in front of us doesn’t turn around. He is shouting in a low, thick theatrical voice that he has shoplifted from the men’s floor of a 1950s department store.

‘But fucking love! I can’t fucking make it work! It’s obviously too dark! It’s too heavy and shameful and dirty and depressed – it’s an old velvet whore hanging from its whore’s bed – it’s been used, it’s on the cheap, it’s dragging all of us down with it to its old rotten-toothed whore old age …’ His shoulders droop, and the clove cigarette burns close to his fingers. He takes a violent last drag and stubs it out on the aisle. I hear him whisper, ‘Now I’m depressed.’

When nobody says anything, he takes a huge breath and demands of the room, ‘Has anybody got any uppers?’

‘Tristan?’ Gavin repeats, but louder this time.

Tristan spins around to face us. He is wearing oversized black plastic sunglasses reminiscent of Jackie Onassis, although they are clearly very cheap. His suit is well cut but still appears to be a size too big for him. So this is Tristan Mitra. He tilts his head down to look at us above his plastic glasses and something devilish twinkles in his eyes as he flashes me a huge wide charming smile. I’ve read about him in the Standard. It was the opening night of his debut play as a director, an all-male version of The Sound of Music at the Brixton Art House, and the press were trying to track him down for a quote because of its rave reviews. They found him in the Charing Cross police station on Agar Road. He’d been arrested for being drunk in charge of a wheelchair on Old Compton Street. He’d run over the feet of twelve sets of tourists, but unlucky thirteen had been a policeman. They found the owner of the wheelchair in a pub at the bottom of Wardour Street with a bottle of vodka and a beef pie. He said that Tristan had offered him two hundred quid for the chair, plus the vodka, and he had just really fancied a drink. But now he couldn’t get home.

Tristan has appeared in the gossip columns as well – he’s rumoured to be having an affair with Phillipe Ellender, the set designer, and I read a thing last week that said he might be having a thing with Dolly Russell herself, which seems utterly bizarre. When they asked him for a quote he said, ‘Loving somebody and not telling them can hurt more than being rejected by them. It’s like rejecting yourself.’ And even though he has a reputation for being able to drink all night, he recently came home so appallingly trashed that he flew into a jealous rage directed at his mother’s chinchilla, Charlton, and tried to microwave it … The RSPCA got involved at some point, that’s why it was in the paper.

‘Gavin! Love! Mountain of a man! Giant Gavin! Ho, ho, ho, green giant!’ he sings and does a strange little dance, ‘Giant Gavin! Love! … Are you on any prescription medication? You’re not on codeine, are you?’

‘No,’ Gavin replies flatly, and Tristan stares at him still, but his smile begins to fade.

‘I had morphine once,’ I say, to try and cheer up this strange little man, this large-voiced wide-eyed director of the stage, who is no more than five foot five.

His face explodes into a huge smile again and I can’t help but smile too.

‘Morphine! I’d fucking kill for some morphine now!’

He has the most English voice I have ever heard, a cross between James Bond and the Queen, it’s made of silk. When he says ‘morphine’ he exclaims it, like his own personal Eureka!

‘Gavin, love, giant, man mountain, bouncy castle, can we get any morphine? Is there a hospital nearby? Better yet, St John’s Ambulance Headquarters? They are easily fooled those St John’s guys, they don’t get that much action you see.’ He lowers his glasses and winks at me and I feel myself blushing. He notices it, stops, smiles and winks again. ‘So they’ll chuck anything at you given the chance. Last year I was at the Streatham fete with my mother – she was selling chutney – and frankly I was bored stupid, and I saw the St John’s Ambulance there and couldn’t believe my luck! I wandered over and just casually mentioned that I’d twisted my arm unpacking two boxes of Mum’s finest, and asked them to improvise me a splint and they bloody did it in seconds out of a bloody Daily Telegraph! It was fucking marvellous! It was splint poetry! Broken-bone poetry! It’s dark in here, isn’t it? I think it’s the bloody curtain …’

Tristan spins around to face the stage and it feels like the light has gone out. Next to me, Gavin sighs quietly.

‘Could it be the glasses?’ I ask.

‘No, love, no …’ Tristan turns back to face us, but doesn’t take them off. ‘I wear them all the time now. I got them free from some fucking teenage magazine –’ He lights another clove cigarette without offering either Gavin or I the pack, and inhales deeply. Blowing out a large smoke ring, he points through its centre at nothing with his finger. ‘– Jackie or Shirley or Tarty or something like that, some teenage slutty magazine. And it was one pound fifty at the newsagent’s! And these were stuck to the front of this magazine, like a bloody godsend! My eyes had been so red that month anyway, and above them it said something like, “How to know if the time is really right to let him touch you” … or “Give him your cherry but keep the box that it comes in” … or “Don’t let him lick you” … or something.’ He stops and counts something on his fingers and mutters quickly.

Gavin and I exchange a glance. Tristan is like a walking spotlight. I don’t want him to spin around again. I don’t think Gavin likes him as much as I do, but maybe he’s just too high up. I am five foot five, five foot eight in my heels today, and Tristan is at least three inches shorter than me. If we stood back to back in bare feet we’d probably be the same height, except his hair is really high.

‘And I just thought perfect!’ Tristan is talking again. ‘They ground me, but let me be me. They steal the me from me. They remind me that everything is filtered, through experience. You know not one person that comes to see this shit-shambles of a play will see it the same? We all see it through our life filters – who we’ve loved, who we’ve screwed, who’s screwed us. If they were the fucking one, or they just wanted to get their leg over and then they did it with your best mate one Wednesday night after football practice.’

Tristan stops talking and lowers his glasses again, fixing me with a stare. His pupils are almost black. I feel the colour rushing to my cheeks. I am caught in his tractor beam.

‘By the time you reach twenty you are emotionally shot to shit, and I’m thirty-six! That’s fucking awful, isn’t it? How the hell did that happen? But that’s the world. That’s life. That’s London. Non, regrette rien. We are all a little damaged –’ he pushes his sunglasses back up to cover his eyes, ‘– shop soiled with the juices of lovers old, just not broken, not quite broken. Do you have any uppers?’

‘No, sorry.’ I shake my head and feel really bad. I would love to be able to give him an upper right now – not that I think he needs it, but he just really seems to want one. We stand in a temporary silence, which I decide to smash.

‘Sometimes I say to Ben, that’s my boyfriend, I say, “Say something nice”, and he says, “I don’t do it to order”, and I say, “Okay, Ben, but you never fucking do it!”’

I hear Gavin sigh but I ignore it because I have Tristan’s full attention, as long as his eyes are open under his sunglasses.

‘“You never do it, Ben!”’ I carry on. ‘And I just think that if you are going to be with somebody it might be nice if they said nice things, to cheer you up, and let you know why they are with you – that it’s not just killing time, because they don’t love you and they don’t initiate sex so really there isn’t much point, but they aren’t ending it so …’

Tristan whips off his sunglasses and stares at me in alarm.

‘I want you to know that I haven’t taken these off for four days and that includes sleeping and a court appearance,’ he says, nodding his head at me to make his point, so I completely understand the gravity of his action. The whites of his eyes are riddled with red veins like worms inching around his massively dilated pupils.

‘Fucking hell,’ he says, shaking his head now. ‘Are you in an actual relationship? Do people still do that? We should definitely talk about that – I’m interested. Just not right now. But let’s definitely talk later. Who are you?’ He asks me with the accent on ‘are’, as if I may be an imposter, or an alien, or it might actually be important to somebody.

Gavin answers before I can. ‘New Make-up for Dolly.’

And I don’t sound that important after all. I’m not even the original. I’m a replacement, sloppy seconds – again.

‘Right, right, right, right.’ Tristan nods with each word, with complete understanding. ‘What happened to Old Make-up?’ he asks Gavin seriously.

‘She quit.’

‘But why?’ Tristan asks.

‘Dolly spiked her drink.’

Tristan’s eyebrows rise simultaneously and a smile tweaks the corners of his mouth.

‘With what?’

‘The doctor said it was probably speed.’

‘Lucky bitch,’ Tristan whispers and gazes off to one side, as if remembering some long-forgotten afternoon with a long-forgotten lover in a long-forgotten field, somewhere long forgotten. He turns back to Gavin.

‘Who’s Dolly’s dealer?’ he asks seriously.

‘I don’t know, Tristan,’ Gavin replies, with no more expression in his voice than if he were reading the Ikea instructions for a self-assembly three-drawer chest, but Tristan doesn’t seem to mind.

‘Right. Right. Right.’ He nods his head again, computing the information.

‘Make-up,’ he turns to me.

‘Yes?’

‘Who’s your dealer?’

‘I don’t … I don’t really have one …’

‘Right. Okay. Two things. Number one – watch your drinks. If you think she’s spiked it bring it to me and I’ll test it … Let’s go to Gerry’s later and we can talk properly then. You do go to Gerry’s, right? Next door to the Subway at the bottom of Dean Street? Fucking Subway, how did they get to be everywhere all of a sudden? But I do love their meat!’

Gerry’s is a bar in Soho that is open all night for people like me, and Tristan, and anybody really. People who need to carry on drinking for a little while after the curtain goes down.

‘Yep.’

‘Good.’ He nods and turns to leave.

‘What was the second thing?’ I ask before he goes.

He pivots on his heel and fixes me with another smile, sucking on the arm of his plastic glasses.

‘Are the pillows real?’ His eyes jump down to my chest and he moves his glance from one to the other as if a tennis match is being conducted across my cleavage.

‘They’re all mine,’ I say with a smile.

‘Good for you. Lady luck. No jogging, though, Make-up, it could be carnage. Gerry’s then. Gavin! I’ll be back in ten, I need to do a thing.’

He pushes on his glasses and walks towards the front of house, disappearing quickly through a set of swing doors.

Gavin and I stand in silence and watch him go. I feel exhausted. Something crashes loudly on the stage behind us.

‘Maybe he doesn’t want to hurt your feelings,’ Gavin says while still staring at the swing doors.

‘Tristan?’ The pillow talk could have offended less of a girl than me. I’m used to it, however, from Ben.

‘No, your bloke. This Ben.’

‘And just drifting on without any kind of emotional investment isn’t hurting my feelings?’ I ask, still staring at the swing doors myself.

‘I don’t see a gun to your head …’ Gavin turns to me as if breaking out of a trance. I snap myself out of it as well. I wonder whether Tristan has opium sewn into his suit. He has left us both dazed and a little cloudy.

‘But …’ I shake my head to clear it, ‘but I love him, Gavin … it’s so hard …’

‘Nothing is that hard really … look at the facts …’ He turns and walks towards the stage. I follow.

‘Okay,’ I count on my fingers, ‘he doesn’t say he loves me. He doesn’t want to have sex with me. He doesn’t say nice things to me, even when I ask him to …’

‘Has he ever said anything nice to you?’

‘He said I was “electrifying” once …’

‘Electrifying? What does that mean?’ Gavin looks nonplussed.

‘I know. Pretty much nothing. It made me sound like a waltzer at a fun fair …’

‘Or a broken hair-dryer,’ Gavin offers as we walk through a small door at the side of the stage.

‘Thanks, Gavin, thanks very much.’

‘Is he seventy-five? Or a miner?’ he asks.

‘No … He’s thirty-three and he runs a branch of Dixons … Are there any miners left? You know, after Thatcher?’

‘Not really. You should leave him.’ He says this with some certainty, and I wonder how he can be so sure.

‘But why doesn’t he leave me, Gavin, if he wants to? I love him! If he doesn’t want to be with me, why is he still with me?’

We reach a small door backstage that has been freshly painted lilac. A sign that reads ‘Do NOT disturb’ swings from the doorknob, as well as what looks like a lavender sachet, the type they sell at school fetes, that somebody’s granny made at her club. Gavin turns the knob as he says, ‘Because he’s weak.’

I feel hugely disloyal. I hate that Gavin has just said that. He doesn’t even know Ben. I have painted this picture, and it is obviously an awful one.

‘I don’t know, Gavin, I don’t think that’s fair. He’s come from a really hard place, he left his wife for me, and …’

I start to defend him, but Gavin fixes me with a stare, from way up high. Maybe that is it – he’s weak. I hadn’t thought of that.

‘Scarlet. He’s weak. Most men are.’

‘But I thought that men were supposed to be the strong ones?’ I say, quietly confused.

‘They are … This is it.’ Gavin shrugs at the little room and it feels like the room shrugs back.

‘We might need you to make-up some of the other leads. Our Cast Make-up, Greta, is about eighty. She’s always got a hipflask full of Drambuie on the go. We can’t let her do eyeliner. We haven’t got enough insurance.’

‘Fine.’ I dump my make-up box on a table covered in flowers and cards, in front of a long, thin, badly lit mirror. ‘As long as Dolly’s okay with me doing it I’m happy to.’

‘It’s cool, you could get here at midday every day and still have time to do the two other principals before she turns up.’

‘Anybody I know?’ I unclip the three locks on my carrier. It’s like a portable Fort Knox, but the prospect of it falling open on the tube and thousands of pounds’ worth of make-up tumbling out to be crushed under loafers and court shoes is unthinkable.

Gavin passes me a polystyrene cup of instant coffee that has appeared like magic. ‘Arabella Jones and Tom Harvey-Saint,’ he says as I take a sip.

I spit it back out all over Gavin’s huge trainers.

‘Didn’t realise he was in it, did you?’ Gavin smirks at me.

‘No … I didn’t realise he was in it.’ The blood rushes from my legs to my head and I lean back against the table urgently.

‘Fancy him, do you?’ Gavin asks, but as if he is reading court notes back to a jury.

I gulp but don’t answer.

‘Watch out Ben,’ he whistles, and edges towards the door.

The side of the room that isn’t the table and mirror and flowers and cards is cushions and more flowers, a large gold chair with deep red velvet backing, and a tall lamp with a fuchsia scarf thrown over it to soften the light. It’s a tiny space crammed with decoration, an old room dressed up to the nines.

A noisy fan blows hot air out in the corner, but it seems fairly warm anyway.

‘Do we really need that?’ I ask Gavin, nodding at the heater.

‘Yep. The pipes are rubbish and she likes it to be twenty-four degrees.’

‘The lighting in here is terrible,’ I say, spinning around, trying to find another plug socket.

‘She won’t have it any brighter either, and when you meet her you’ll see why,’ he says. ‘Do you need anything before I go?’

‘Where’s the kitchen?’

‘Down the hall, second turn on the left.’

‘Where’s the bathroom?’

‘Hers is opposite, you can use that if you’re discreet. Anything else?’

I rack my brain, trying to stumble across the gaps in my knowledge, all the necessary pieces of information that could be missing. Theatre is new to me, it’s not my thing. I do shoots. I do hanging around all day eating crap from a van and dabbing sweat off actors or singers with a puff pad. I do wine at lunch on set and pretty much all afternoon. I do big airy warehouse spaces, not strange little rooms with scarves thrown over lamps and bad heating.

‘Is Tristan crazy?’ I ask finally, as it seems to be the most pertinent question I can ask. ‘I mean, previews are supposed to start next week, aren’t they? That’s why they got me in and didn’t wait for someone with theatre experience, my agency said. But it kind of … doesn’t seem ready?’

Gavin smiles and the room feels warmer. He coughs, looks away, and then back at me. It is a theatrical move. Maybe you can’t help it if you work in this environment, maybe these strange dramatic pauses and looks and asides are contagious? Maybe everybody here is crazy.

‘Is Tristan crazy?’ he repeats. ‘No more than any of the rest of them. He likes the sound of his own voice. And he can be very charming, for a short bloke from Streatham with a pill habit. But you’ll get used to it. He calls everybody “love” so he doesn’t have to remember names. It’s actually quite clever. But you’re okay, you’ll be Make-up.’

‘Isn’t it funny, I mean funny strange – maybe funny tragic for me – that one man can be so easy with it, and another so mean?’ I sip my coffee and lean back on the counter.

‘With what?’ he asks, half of him out of the door, but still loads of him in the room.

‘The L word. Love. Ben won’t say it. Tristan can’t stop. So is he gay?’

Gavin takes a step back into the room and pushes the door ajar behind him. ‘No, not gay. I’m sure he’ll tell you. He told me three days after I met him and it took him a while to warm to me, he said because of the height thing. It’s … Tristan is a non-libidinist. That’s his phrase, not mine. It means he doesn’t think about sex. Or care about sex. He doesn’t want sex.’ Gavin’s eyes widen like spaceships in his face, illuminated and strange and high up in the sky.

I stop myself taking another sip of coffee, and angle my neck to look up at him and make sure he isn’t joking. But he nods his head and doesn’t even smirk.

‘He doesn’t care about sex?’ I ask.

‘Nope.’

‘And he doesn’t think about sex?’

‘Nope.’

‘But men are supposed to think about sex every seven seconds or seven minutes or something, aren’t they?’

Gavin coughs, embarrassed. We’ve spent at least half an hour together this morning … reckoning on those figures Gavin has felt fruity and not admitted it a few times already.

‘Christ, that’s the statistic that keeps me awake at night when Ben doesn’t want to … you know … But Tristan doesn’t even think about it? How does that work? How do you stop yourself? That would be fantastic!’

‘You think? Christ, I think it would be awful.’

‘But Gavin, I mean, if it didn’t even bother you, if you didn’t even think about it, life would be so much easier. If I didn’t miss sex so much there would be far fewer problems in my relationship.’

‘It’s not fantastic, it’s weird. And so is your bloke by the sounds of it, so don’t go thinking that not thinking about sex is an answer to anything. Sex is the thing that keeps most of us going!’

‘Shouldn’t that be love, Gavin?’

‘I’ll take sex over love most days. It doesn’t hurt half as much, under normal circumstances at least!’

I grimace at Gavin, but he just winks and I blush. It’s not him, I blush if anybody winks at me. I find it intimate and peculiar and sexual. I’d blush if my own grandmother winked at me, and then of course I’d throw up.

‘So Tristan doesn’t have sex, ever?’

‘Oh no, that’s not true, I think he has it quite a bit. It’s just not about him. He doesn’t care if he gets it or not. I think he does it for other people …’

‘But – I’m sorry, Gavin, for all these questions – but how does he get … you know … aroused? If he doesn’t want it, or care about it?’

‘My guess is Viagra. Any more questions?’ Gavin pulls the door open again with one of his huge hands. He could be a one-man circus, with a few lights around his torso, offering rides on his palms for fifty pence or a pound. I’m sure I could sit in one of those hands.

‘Gavin, what’s your girlfriend like?’

‘What’s she like?’

‘Is she freakishly tall too?’ I smile at him and I see a smile form in his eyes in return. The big Gavin smiles must be rationed, like chocolate in the war.

‘Not freakishly tall, but not short like you either.’

‘I am not short, I am five foot five, which is two inches above average. Is she pretty?’

‘Why all the questions about my girlfriend?’

‘I’m just interested, Gavin. Other people’s relationships interest me. I just wonder what you go for, what your type is. Everybody has a type. Some men just go for baubles, decoration. The only thing more attractive to a man than a beautiful woman is an easy life. And I just wondered what your type is. Beautiful or easy?’

Gavin looks at me with an element of serious concern. I don’t think he likes this line of questioning. But he answers anyway.

‘Arabella? She is very beautiful. And not at all easy. So there’s your answer I guess.’

‘Arabella from the play? But Gavin, she’s stunning!’

‘And?’ he asks me, like a dry old maths teacher waiting for an answer from a stupid young pupil.

‘And nothing, nothing at all. That wasn’t surprise, I just meant … good for you!’

Gavin lowers his head and inspects the coffee I spat out onto his trainers, which is drying into a dirty stain that looks a bit like the birthmark on Gorbachev’s forehead.

‘We’ll see,’ he says, half out of the door now. ‘She is gorgeous. But she’s definitely not easy, and it can wear you down.’

‘Not easy is the best kind!’ I say, as he is almost gone, but I hear him mutter ‘Tell that to your boyfriend,’ just as the walkie-talkie on his belt starts spewing white noise and static, and I hear a muffled voice say,

‘Dolly’s at the back door.’

My door opens again and Gavin pokes his head back in. ‘Dolly’s arrived,’ he says, and turns to leave.

‘Should I wait here?’ I shout, a hint of panic in my voice.

‘Depends on her mood. She might throw you out, she might want to meet you straight away. You may as well stay, I suppose. I’ll try and gauge how she is before she gets down here.’

‘Should I be scared?’ I ask him.

‘I don’t know, are you scared of most things?’

‘It’s starting to feel that way.’

‘Well if you are she’ll sense it, like an attack dog, so try and keep it under control. And don’t worry, with any luck she’ll be hammered.’

Gavin shuts the door.

I unpack and inspect my brushes to see if any of them need replacing, and open up a couple of samples that a new make-up company have sent me. I check my own hair in the mirror and mess it up a little, and re-gloss. The trouble with talking is that it wears your gloss away. I think about sitting, but I don’t know where Dolly will want to sit, and I don’t want her to burst in and chuck me straight back out again for nabbing her favourite spot. I try to lean back nonchalantly, cross my arms, uncross them, strike a relaxed non-fearful pose that doesn’t just look ill at ease and terrified.

I spot a press pack sitting on the desk, and a picture of Tristan sticks out. Somebody has childishly drawn long eyelashes on him, and a pencil-thin moustache. Below the picture the text reads:

Directed by Tristan Mitra, Tennessee Williams’s The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore has been staged at The Majestic once before, starring Hollywood screen idol Joanna Till. The play marks Tristan’s debut in the West End, fresh from the success of his all-male adaptation of The Sound of Music at the Brixton Art House. He previously worked for the DSS for thirteen years, but was fired, which he believes intrinsic to his direction of the play.

I pick up another page and see a heavily air-brushed close-up of Dolly. You can tell it’s air-brushed because no matter how good the make-up there would still be the suggestion of lines around her eyes and lips, but her face is like a porcelain mask instead. I skim-read text. It mentions Laurence Olivier and David Niven, but then nothing of note for two decades, until recently when it seems she’s been in some TV movies, playing ‘the popular grandmother detective Mrs Mounting for the Hallmark Channel series Mrs Mounting Investigates.’ From David Niven to the Hallmark Channel then. I toss the pack back onto the counter, sit on my hands to stop them from shaking, and wait for Dolly Russell to make her grand entrance.