by Louise Kean
‘I’m an actor.’ He pinched his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger, as if appraising a painting in the Portrait Gallery, or a piece of broken china in a boot sale.
‘That makes sense. You may as well play to your strengths.’
‘Are you a model?’ he asked.
‘I am quite clearly five foot five. We both know that I am not a model.’
‘You could be a different kind of model, it doesn’t have to be catwalk.’
‘If you are asking me if I am a hand model, I find that offensive.’
‘Not at all. You could be a model of the more glamorous variety.’ He reached out and moved a strand of hair away from my eyes. I blinked him away.
‘You’re hoping I take my top off for a living?’
‘Maybe.’
‘I’m sorry to disappoint, but these puppies stay caged most days. I’m Make-up.’
‘Why don’t I ever get a Make-up like you? All mine are married with three kids.’
‘Your wife probably hires them,’ I said, without a smile.
‘I’m not married. Are you?’
‘Not yet. I have a “Ben”.’
‘And where is your “Ben” this evening?’
‘Playing Championship Manager with a warehouse assistant from Ealing Dixons.’
‘He sounds like fun.’
‘Yeah, well, you don’t know him. He has other qualities.’
‘Like what?’
‘You don’t care, so I’m not going to answer. Thanks for the drink.’
I walked off, proud of myself. The guy was on the make, I was obviously too drunk, and it showed but I still resisted. I didn’t want to meet anybody that night. It had become too frequent, too easy lately. A peck on the lips before home-time turning into a full-blown kiss, and I didn’t know who I was kissing and if I would ever see them again. It made me feel wretched. The first time that I kissed somebody else I didn’t realise it was happening until my lips were merged with his, and once I’d started, like eating a chocolate digestive at eleven a.m. on the first day of a new diet, it seemed pointless to stop. I’d start my fidelity again tomorrow. And the ‘being unfaithful’ part, in itself, was so unexceptional and run of the mill and ordinary that it just didn’t seem like that big a deal. He was an ad exec and we were drunk at eight p.m. on a shoot for the Carphone Warehouse, and we had stumbled into the wardrobe cupboard to find funny hats to wear. As I said, we were drunk. He kissed me, and I kissed him back, and the passion felt so unfamiliar it was akin to riding the rapids at Center Parcs, or jumping up and down on a bouncy castle – it didn’t seem bad, because I didn’t love him or care about him. It just seemed like a fun thing to do at the time, and nothing at all to do with Ben. It was three hours later that I experienced delayed shock, like whiplash, and I burst violently into tears.
That was it, I had cheated. I had spent all this time terrified that Ben would be unfaithful, and I had just let a cocky guy from Kent called Dave cop a feel of me through my blouse, and tell me that he loved it when I scratched my nails across his stomach under his shirt. It felt awful then, and awful the next time, four months later at three a.m. in the corner of a bar called Push on Dean Street, with a stuntman I’d met half an hour earlier. He had deliberately set himself alight only two hours previously.
That was just a kiss. Eight months later I went home with a guy called Jonathan who was the post-production supervisor on a short film I’d been working on. I consoled myself that at least I’d known him for three days when it happened. I’d called Ben the next day and told him I’d crashed at my brother’s because it was closer, and he hadn’t seemed bothered, he certainly hadn’t questioned me as I would have questioned him if he had stayed out all night. In a way I wish he had, and I’d been forced to admit it there and then. The lack of suitable grilling the next day just compounded the reasoning in my head for doing it: Ben didn’t care.
That night at Gerry’s, walking away from another possible indiscretion, I collapsed in a corner and chatted to an old bloke in a checked suit with a red nose and three strips of hair that sat on his crown like rashers of bacon. He was hammered on whiskey, but he managed to tell me that I bore a sharp resemblance to his first and favourite wife, only that I was fatter.
I noticed the handsome sleaze staring at me from the bar, trying to catch my eye. I ignored it, but eventually he was by my side again, putting another glass of red into my hand.
‘I can’t shrug you off tonight, can I?’
‘I’m Tom Harvey-Saint. And you are?’
‘Scarlet.’
‘That’s a very evocative name. Do you have a giant “A” on your chest?’
‘Not yet, no, but I’m working on it.’
‘You seem sad, Scarlet, and I’d like to help.’
‘I bet you would. Help me out of these wet clothes perhaps?’
‘Well that’s a very depressing way of looking at things. What could be so bad? Look at us, here, tonight, drunk in a glorious city full of beautiful people. What could be so wrong?’
‘That’s not enough for me. I need more than that. Five years ago that was enough, but not now. I need more than wine and London.’
‘Darling, don’t say you’re tired of London, you know what that means.’
‘Maybe I am, maybe I am tired of life. Of my life at least.’
‘Maybe you’re just drunk, darling, and feeling a little dramatic. Let’s not be pompous, it does nothing for you.’
‘I’m not being pompous … I just feel blue.’
‘But Scarlet can’t be blue! What can I do?’ He was stroking my thigh, running his fingers up and down my leg, his digits creeping towards places they shouldn’t. I wanted to shrug him off like a dirty shirt, but at the same time hug him like a five-day-old puppy.
‘Christ, I just want something beautiful to happen! And I want it to happen to me! Have I made that many wrong decisions? Are my expectations so disjointed from reality? Have I been that hateful that I don’t deserve to be happy?’
‘Fuck all that, darling, just live. Wake up. Just have fun. It’s every man for himself.’
‘No it’s not. It can’t be.’
‘Well what do you think the answer is?’
‘I think the answer is to find somebody who wants what you want. And who wants to be honest. And realises that’s a valuable commodity, if you find it. I need somebody to be my refuge …’
‘I completely agree. My name is Tom and I’ll be your air-raid shelter tonight.’
‘Oh you’ll agree with anything I say right now.’
‘Damn right. You have beautiful eyes.’
Tom Harvey-Saint took me by the hand and led me outside Gerry’s, into an alley between a pub and a walk-in health centre.
Tom Harvey-Saint had pecs like paving slabs. I had sex with him in that alley, by accident, in that I let him, I was drunk enough to allow lust to take over. It was violent sex, awful, savage; he thrust into me like a kitchen knife.
I crawled home to Ben that night in a cab, but slept on the sofa, in case he could sense it somehow, smell infidelity on my skin. I wish I had told him then, or that I could tell him now. Lies are so depressing.
‘Gerry’s? Are you a barmaid?’ he asks now.
I turn around. Tom Harvey-Saint leans in the doorway, ready for his close-up. He is as handsome as the last time I saw him. He is tall enough to dominate any room, and dark enough to catch any woman’s eye. He has wide grey eyes and a full bottom lip that looks like it’s just been bitten – it probably has been, for effect. His chest is like a barrel, and his stomach flattens under his belt like a snowboard. He is wearing a dark green short-sleeved polo shirt tucked into khakis. Both of his forearms rest on the doorframe on either side of his head. It looks like a casual pose, but I still can’t get out.
‘No, I’m not a barmaid. I’ve just seen you in Gerry’s.’
‘Good old Gerry’s. That must be it then. What are you doing here?’
‘Make-up. For Dolly. And
you and Arabella as well apparently.’
‘Fantastic. I’ve never had a Make-up that looks as good as you. Mine are always married with three kids.’
‘So you’ve said.’ I nod my head at him, but he ignores it.
‘I do feel like I know you though …’ He stares at me and smiles.
I shrug, grit my teeth and hope he’ll leave.
‘Maybe I’ll see you later, then, at Gerry’s?’ he asks. He can’t use my name because of course he doesn’t know it.
‘Maybe.’
‘I’m Tom Harvey-Saint by the way,’ he adds, stretching out his hand to be shaken, knowing full well that I would recognise him from his appearances as Rob McKenzie on Death Watch – if I didn’t recognise him already, that is.
‘Scarlet.’ I rush out my answer, hoping he’ll forget it as quickly, and offer him my hand sharply. Instead of shaking it he grabs it, turns it over and kisses my palm, looking thoughtful for a second, flickers of recognition sparking behind his eyes. When I yank my hand back he seems alarmed.
‘Sorry, but I’ve just bleached my brushes and I don’t want you to inhale,’ I say.
I dart past him, making sure not to catch his eye, but the hairs on my arms silently stand up and scream as they graze the hairs on his. His neurons and my neurons or his atoms or my protons or something are diametrically apposed or aligned or whatever the science is that means my body lurches towards him dangerously. There is a dark pocket of something wild that hides deep inside of me that threatens my sanity when I am near a man like Tom Harvey-Saint. I practically run back to Dolly’s room. Shutting the door behind me I catch my breath. I hold my hands out in front of me and see what I already know, that they are shaking. I feel like he preyed on me, and yet I was compliant at the time. I think he realised that night that I was past the point of right and wrong or conscious decision-making, and that it was apparent that I didn’t know what I was doing, or who with. I just try not to think about it. The only person I have told is Helen. She called him all sorts of names, but I wondered, even then, if I was just making excuses for myself, for my actions. I did it. That’s that.
My stomach rumbles, and with still no sign of Dolly I grab my phone out of my bag. I don’t have a single bar of reception, so I think fuck it and I take it upstairs. I sit on the warm front steps of the theatre, tucking my skirt in between my legs for modesty, as tourists and runners and couriers stream past. Feeling like I’ve been submerged in some twisted underworld I gasp in the air. I call Helen.
‘Guess who I’m working with?’ I ask before she can even say hello.
‘George Clooney?’
‘I need you to know that if that day ever comes I won’t be taking time out to call you, Helen.’
‘Will we ever tire of him, do you think?’ she asks. She’s asked this many a time and I always give the same reply. It’s hard to move on from a George moment. He’s our thing, our one, at the top of all our ‘top three’ lists, the one that nobody will ever push off a cliff. It’s not his stomach, it’s his eyes.
‘We will never tire of George,’ I reply, ‘especially not now he’s turned to the body politic. It just makes him more beautiful. He’s handsome, and he thinks, and maybe even cares a little.’
‘But not about women. He won’t marry again,’ Helen says with a sigh.
‘Yes, but maybe he’s hit on the answer? I know he’s not sitting in Italy wasting his time thinking, “Where’s my white dress? Where’s my ‘one’?”’
I wonder what life revelation George has hit upon, other than the futility of it all, which I refuse to acknowledge even in my darker moments. I wonder what he’s learnt about life that I haven’t yet, and if he’d be prepared to share his theory with me, perhaps over a plate of basil and mozzarella in his big Italian villa on Lake Como? In return I’d promise to thrash out the prospect of an all-female US Presidential Race, over amaretto and ice cream, as lights twinkled around Laglio with the sun setting behind us. Perhaps he’d lend me his sweater? Perhaps dreams are the only romance there is left.
‘So not George Clooney,’ I say. ‘Guess again.’
‘I don’t know,’ Helen says.
‘Tom Harvey-Saint.’
‘Shit,’ Helen says flatly. ‘Shit. How did that happen? Scarlet, how did you not know that he was going to be there? I mean, that’s just rubbish luck.’
‘I know. He didn’t recognise me at least. It’s horrible. This whole job is weird and I’m probably going to be here for months. I don’t know if I’ll last the day at this rate. The director is this crazy guy who rubbed glitter on my lips, and …’
‘Which lips?’
‘Don’t be foul, Helen.’
‘Okay.’
We pause for a second. I glance up the road to see if the Evening Standard seller is still there. He is, I didn’t dream him.
‘Did you win your squash match?’ I ask her. Helen likes it when I pay attention to the details of her life, and so I should. Shortly after she and Steven got engaged they went out one night for dinner, in Woking, with Steven’s best friend Peter and his wife Amanda. Helen told me the following day that they didn’t ask her a single question about herself all night. It was a perfectly pleasant evening, but not one question about her. Helen kept asking Amanda where she was from, about the holiday she knew that she and Peter had just taken in Argentina, and wasn’t it amazing that there was a glacier at the bottom of Argentina, and how strange that she didn’t know that! And what was their house like? What was their village like? And their neighbours, and their goddamn local pub! Question after question. And every time there was a pause in the conversation she waited for them to ask her something about herself. Anything. Not even a big question. ‘How is your chicken?’ would have done. But nothing came. If the conversation paused the couple filled it by making little remarks to each other instead.
‘Did I win?’ Helen asks. ‘God no, I got completely thrashed. It was a walkover. She killed me.’
Helen sounds flat, her voice smooth like a pebble, when speak of defeat normally results in spits and spikes.
‘What’s wrong, Hel? You don’t seem bothered, normally you’d be destroyed at losing by that much.’
‘Steven just texted me. He’s going to be late tonight. Work drinks, he says.’
‘Oh, Helen, I’m so sorry.’ I hang my head in my hands. It’s all so tiring, these clouds of lies everywhere.
‘No, it’s fine. It’s good. I’m going to see.’
‘What do you mean, you’re going to see?’ A guy walks past me in a T-shirt that says ‘Don’t ask if you’re ugly’. I hate him instantly.
‘For myself, I’m going to see what she looks like.’
‘No, Helen, you can’t! What difference does it make anyway?’
As I am talking I grab at an old piece of newspaper lying next to me on the steps, scrunch it up into a ball, and throw it at ‘Don’t ask’s’ back. He glances around and brushes his arm where it hits him, but I act naturally and I don’t think he suspects me. It’s a busy-enough street for him not to know.
‘Scarlet, what are you talking about? Look how obsessed you were with seeing Katie! Of course it matters. What if she’s older? What if she’s fat? What if she’s eighteen and skinny and stupid? What if her hair is stripy like Tony the Tiger, or she wears orange foundation, or has fake boobs, or long legs, or a mountain of cleavage and a zip on her top that just about holds them in?’
‘And what if she is younger, Helen? What if she’s really pretty? That’s the worst-case scenario, isn’t it? But it still won’t mean anything. It won’t change things. It’s not her, it’s him!’
I hear Helen fight back a sob at the end of the line. I am surprised. She is stronger than I am.
‘I just want to see for myself,’ she says, and I know that she will do it no matter what I say.
‘Do you want me to come with you, Hel? I could try and get out early?’
‘No. No. I just want to do it on my own. Stay away from that sleaze, th
ough, Scarlet. He’s a sod.’
‘We were both drunk, Helen, I’m sure I was just as bad.’
‘I’m sure you bloody weren’t.’
‘Don’t ask if you’re ugly’ is walking back towards me, and I keep my head down. Maybe he has realised it was me …
‘Helen, don’t you think we are just a little too used to seeing the best in each other? You know the way that you never think any man is good enough for one of your friends? We think we’re wonderful! It’s just, nobody else seems to think so …’
‘That’s what friends are for. Is Ben still being … Ben?’
‘I guess. It’s my fault. I need to take action.’
‘He needs to take some goddamn action, Scarlet, that’s what needs to happen. He needs to get up off his arse and do something!’
‘Well I think he might be already. I think he might be doing Katie again.’
‘Excuse me?’ The T-shirt guy is standing in front of me, with Diesel jeans and a scarf wrapped three times around his neck, designer sunglasses and spiky black hair. And he looks like he’s wearing fake tan.
‘Hold on, Helen,’ I say, and look up. ‘Yes?’
He smiles a really broad smile, and asks, ‘Do you know where Paul Smith is?’
‘No. Sorry.’
‘You’ve got great legs,’ he says, and I smile.
‘Your T-shirt,’ I say, pointing at his chest.
He looks down and smiles cockily. ‘Oh, it’s just a joke,’ he replies and winks at me.
‘I don’t think it’s funny,’ I tell him, and smile.
‘You’re all right, it doesn’t apply to you,’ he says, with a bigger smile, a more pronounced wink.
‘Oh fuck off,’ I reply, and turn back to my phone.
‘What was all that about?’ Helen asks.
‘Just some loser in a bad T-shirt,’ I say.
‘Is he still there?’ Helen asks.
‘Is there something else?’ I ask him, as he stands gawping at me.
‘You’re just a pair of tits,’ he practically spits at me.
‘And you’re charming. That T-shirt should read, “Don’t ask, I’m a prick!”’
‘What’s your fucking problem?’ he starts shouting, at which point I hear the door open behind me, and Gavin’s voice saying,
