by Louise Kean
‘Are you all right, Scarlet?’
I turn to face the T-shirt. ‘I’m fine, Gavin.’ I look at the T-shirt guy, who looks at Gavin and slouches off.
‘I’ll be back in, in a minute,’ I say to Gavin and smile. ‘Sorry, Helen, what were we saying?’
‘Who was the hero?’ she asks, and I sense her smiling.
‘Just some new guy I’m working with – he’s massive’ I say, as explanation.
‘Oh really? Sounds interesting …’
‘What were we saying?’ I ask to stop her going down that path.
‘About Ben being back with Katie? I’m sure that’s not true Scarlet. She wouldn’t have him anyway, would she?’
‘Oh Christ, I don’t know. But please don’t go tonight, Helen, I don’t want you to get hurt.’
‘I’m not going to be carrying a gun, Scarlet, it’s not a proper stakeout.’
‘No, I mean emotionally, I don’t want you to get upset.’
‘What’s done is done.’
‘But it’s not done yet.’
‘Yes it is. I’ll speak to you later.’
We hang up.
I am obsessed with what Katie looks like. I could look at photos of her all day and it wouldn’t be enough. The volcano-holiday snap was the only one I’ve seen of them together. Every other photo is of either Ben or Katie alone, smiling absently at the camera, bored even, but smiling. They both wear suitably glazed-over expressions with mountains or the sea as a backdrop. Or they are seated in a restaurant, and Ben has flung an arm loosely around her shoulder, absent of affection. It’s not as if I could have known somehow, or guessed that this might be the way it would turn out for me too. I wasn’t privy to the photo collection before he left.
Still, Katie is all limbs in these photos, and sensible shoes, and smiles. I’ve put on nearly a stone since the day Ben and I first met. I feel like it shouldn’t make a difference. I don’t know if it does. If he loved me it wouldn’t matter, I haven’t exploded, I’m not vast. Maybe now I’m more of a big twelve than a small ten. Of course the ‘if he loved me’ bit is crucial. If he doesn’t, then that extra stone might mean the world. I have no way of knowing. Even if I asked him, he wouldn’t answer.
I stand up and brush myself down, checking for snags in my skirt. Sometimes the sun casts a shadow that’s bigger than you are. I don’t know how or why, but if it’s late in the day and the angle is right, or whatever the science, it casts a fatter, darker shadow than it should.
I wander back inside, push through the swing doors and amble up the aisle as my eyes adjust to the darkness. A series of teenagers are still moving things around at the sides of the stage, but Tom and Arabella are up there now, rehearsing their lines. I recognise her from some BBC Jane Austen or the like. There is no mistaking that she is very beautiful. She is naturally haughty, her bones delicate and fine and serious. Her eyes are dark and intense, almost black. Her jaw-line is perfectly smooth and heart-shaped. She could make any man fall in love with her. I think Gavin must love her. She will need little work from me.
I sit and watch them for a while as they move about the stage, rehearsing their lines, playing out what seems to be an uneasy relationship. Tom acts tired, worn out, nervous. He seems convincing. They adjust their tones, somehow always facing forwards, never turning their backs on me, as they try out different poses, different gestures, varying strengths of voice. I spot Tristan sitting cross-legged at the front of the stage, studying them intently, his hands in prayer, his fingers by his chin, deep in concentration. He sips on a Frappacino now and then, placing it carefully next to him between thoughts.
Tom moves elegantly to the front of the stage, and asks Arabella, ‘How long is it till morning?’
Tristan says, ‘A bell tolls.’
Arabella take a couple of paces forwards and looks at her empty wrist.
‘Oh, my – watch has stopped. I’m a watch-winding person but I forgot to wind it.’
I shiver, sitting three rows back with nobody in front or behind me. It is peculiar to watch them like this, in jeans and Tshirts, without a watch, or the bells, or the props they should need but somehow don’t.
I realise Gavin is standing at the end of my row.
‘Still no Dolly?’ I ask, alarmed that I have forgotten all about her.
‘No, she’s not coming in. Not today. She wouldn’t get out of the car.’
‘Why not?’
Gavin slumps down a seat away from me. His knees bang the chair in front of him. He needs at least two seats to himself.
‘We don’t really know. She pulled up at the back, I opened the door like every other day, but she wouldn’t come in. Wouldn’t even get out of the car.’
‘It’s not me, is it?’
‘God, no. Scarlet, it’s got nothing to do with you. It’s her. She’s a mad old drunk. They’ll never actually get her on the stage.’
Gavin watches Arabella as he talks. His eyes follow hers, even though she is addressing Tristan or Tom or somebody off-stage. I turn to watch her too, and she laughs lightly at some joke that Tristan has made. Gavin smiles.
‘Seriously? Do you think she’ll pull out?’ I ask.
‘I just can’t see her getting up there, when there is an audience. Tristan needs to talk to her properly. They need to find a decent replacement if she’s going to bail. She’s the only reason we’ve sold so many tickets. The first two months are sold out. That doesn’t happen too often to us.’
‘But people know Tom and Arabella too …’ I glance back at them on the stage. They are beautiful together, and there is something hypnotic about the couple they make. There are no flaws. It’s not quite real, but, as Flash says to Dale after she’s been caught in Ming’s trance and danced in front of the Hawk Men and Prince Baron: It’s pretty sensational. Flash Gordon is another one of Ben and Iggy’s favourites. I like Flash Gordon too – it makes me laugh at least – although I don’t like the fact that I know the names of all the characters, and the script word for word.
‘They know them, but barely. Tom’s got quite a following now, after that serial-killer thing, but Arabella is still small parts. She definitely couldn’t open it, even with Tom.’
Their bodies are angled towards us but their faces are turned to a screen at the back of the stage that is being removed by a man dressed in shorts and a ‘Kids from Fame’ T-shirt. It reveals a grand four-poster, plump with bedding. In it sits the little electrician from earlier. You can just about see him in between all the cushions. I cough with embarrassment. I have never thought of myself as ‘size-ist’ before, and Gavin gives me a reproachful look.
‘So what do we do now?’ I ask brightly, checking my watch, changing our focus. ‘I don’t know what to do at midday on a Monday if I’m not in bed or working.’
‘Well you may as well go shopping. There’s no point making up Tom or Bella now, they are mid-rehearsal. But we’re all going to Gerry’s later if you fancy it, it’s Tristan’s assistant’s birthday.’
‘Do I need to get a card?’
‘I don’t even know his name. We’re just going to Gerry’s. I’ll see you later.’
Gavin moves off to address a group of guys who stand at the side of the stage talking heatedly about lighting. Tristan glares over at them a couple of times, but they don’t notice.
I think I’ll go to Selfridges.
Tristan gets up and walks over to the side of the stage as I stand to leave.
‘Loves, sorry, can you shut the fuck up? This is hard enough without your girly whisperings.’
They quieten down but I hear one of them mutter, ‘dog boiler’.
Tristan spots me heading for the door. ‘Make-up, no Dolly! Where are you headed?’
‘I was going to go and stock up at Selfridges, I can take a good guess at her base. I’ll keep the receipts if I find anything.’
‘Great. But you’ll come to Gerry’s later, right? It’s my assistant’s birthday, we’re all going.’
‘Okay.
’ I beckon him over, and he strides forwards with a smile. He is wearing those sunglasses again, but also now a set of plastic pink beads that swing beneath his suit jacket.
‘Yep?’ he asks me, tugging off his glasses, wide-eyed and intrigued.
‘Should I get him a card?’
‘Who?’
‘Your assistant?’
‘What a lovely idea. Can I sign it?’
I laugh. ‘If you want to. What’s his name?’
Tristan’s eyes are still wide, and he stares at me for a while. His mouth moves but nothing comes out.
‘I won’t bother with the card then,’ I say.
‘Just buy him a drink and let him look at you for a while, he’s only young, it’ll be a treat!’
Tristan moves back to Tom and Arabella.
I’m to be somebody’s birthday treat. So why do I feel like all my candles have already been blown out?
I only smile again when I think of Selfridges.
Scene IV: Romance
I trip northwards along Charing Cross Road, back the way that I came, but I turn right at Soho Square and slip onto Oxford Street practically unnoticed. My destination: Selfridges beauty hall. It has been, perhaps, the real love of my life so far. It’s a constant, and I think, if it’s possible, it loves me back. Whenever I walk through the front doors a plump gust of wind catches my skirts and blows away any London smog. It’s Selfridges’ way of saying hello. I always nod and say hello back of course. We’re old friends.
So I skip down Oxford Street on my weekly crusade, my pilgrimage in the absence of any meaningful religion. I’m no Lionheart, but I know what I believe. I’m Make-up, it’s what I do. I make the world a little prettier. And I get a discount.
Unfortunately Oxford Street is now little more than a straight line of shops that’s no big jape without credit cards. It’s a flood of tourists lapping at your toes, swelling at bus-stop bottlenecks by Poland Street and Oxford Circus tube, but receding again the further you go, as long as you stay on the left-hand side of the street as you head towards Marble Arch. The pavement is cracked and uneven on both sides, so watch your footing. There are dips and crumbles everywhere you walk, where a thousand million billion steps have been made before you. Imagine if every footprint was even a millionth of a millimetre thick, and every step that was taken was built on top of another. The Great Wall of China would run along Oxford Street building up and up with every step of every shopper throughout Christmas, and then the assorted tourist flip-flops of summer, and they’d have to come in and bulldoze it down every autumn, ready for the crowds again come Advent.
Selfridges is on the right, its red flags waving in the wind and beckoning a thousand dainty bulls, like me, to stampede through its halls. My mother was the first person to take me to Selfridges, when I was young, on one of our day trips. It was different in 1980, and so was my mother. It was a couple of years before she left, but I at least already knew that it was imminent. What I didn’t know is whether she would take me with her. When she hugged me late at night before I went to bed, as I pleaded to be allowed to stay up to watch the TV shows with the enticing theme tunes – Hill Street Blues or Mash – increasingly her squeeze was a little too hard. She’d kiss me forcefully on the head as well, to make sure that I felt it, and that I knew it. In this way her torment surfaced nearly every night. Like an alarming burst of flame on a hob that won’t seem to catch, it surprised and scared me every time.
She wasn’t happy. She was actually unhappy. When the time came for my mum to kiss me goodnight my dad was generally still out at the pub with his friends. Richard and I heard the arguments in the evenings, after teatime but before seven, during news hour:
‘But why don’t we get a babysitter, you could come too?’
‘I don’t want to come too, and sit in that shitty pub full of old morose men who have nothing to talk about but darts or football or beer!’
‘I know what you think of them, I know what you think of me!’
‘It wasn’t you when I met you, it wasn’t the man that I married, but it is now! They are ancient, you are not!’
‘I feel comfortable with them, at least they don’t nag me!’
‘Because they don’t want anything out of life, that’s why!’
‘So you’d rather stay here and watch the television every night with peanuts and a bottle of wine, than come and be social with your husband and his friends?’
‘Without a doubt, Patrick, I would rather do that!’
My dad would leave for the pub defeated, but he would still leave. Maybe he should have stayed one night and sat with my mother instead, but he never did. I loved him but he did what he wanted to do, and yet didn’t seem to understand it when she left. I saw the signs, and I wasn’t even ten. My mother was very beautiful, and we went to Selfridges as a treat sometimes on our day trips to London, to buy her face cream and wander around the beauty hall, rubbing lotions on the back of our hands, and then holding them just under our noses to smell our own skin. She told me that every cream, every perfume, smelt differently on each person’s skin. It would smell differently on hers than it would on mine, she said, but only a little. The difference would be much more profound on somebody else who didn’t have the same blood, but because we were related, to an extent we shared the same skin. But I had my daddy’s skin too, so it would still be a little different. She would rub some cream into her hand first, and then my hand as well, and then we’d compare smells. I always hoped the back of my hand would smell exactly like my mother’s, and sometimes she conceded that it did, and we’d both grin.
All the women behind the counters paid her lots of attention because she was so beautiful. Her hair was already grey. It had been a tumble of long, dark curls in her wedding photos, but had turned quickly to silver in her first years of marriage, like an adverse reaction to my father or the institution itself, and by the age of thirty-one, my age, her hair was like platinum wool, piled up dramatically, high on her head like the most expensive yarn in the shop. She had huge bright blue eyes, lively and Irish, and a square jaw, and a strong nose. All the women tried to spray her with perfume as we walked past but she just ignored them, and said, ‘No thank you, no thank you.’ I think she could only afford the face cream.
My father didn’t trap her, my mother trapped herself. I think that’s what made her sad. He simply settled into the life that they had chosen. My mum chose it too, then quickly found that she hated it, but couldn’t break free, not with me and my brother as well. So when she really couldn’t take any more, and she finally left, she left without us.
Everybody tells me I look a lot like her. At family parties my grandmother always says it, ‘Ahh, it’s like looking at Catherine again!’ And my mother says it herself sometimes when I see her, which is at least once a month because she comes up to town. She has only met Ben a couple of times, though, he doesn’t seem to make it for the dinners that we plan, and I am happy to have her to myself anyway. But I could tell what she was thinking when she met him because her smile gave her away: it’s the same one that I give when I am not quite sure about somebody and there are thoughts mashing in my mind that I shouldn’t share. She is always polite, and she always smiles, asks questions, and kisses him hello and goodbye. I try to get down to the house in Sussex, she tells me to come and take walks on the beach to clear my head, but it’s so hard to find the time. I should go more often …
That was the other thing that Ben and I discovered within half an hour of meeting each other. Both our mothers left when we were little. My mum called my brother and me the evening of the day that she left, and the next day, and the day after that. She kept calling us, even if we hadn’t done anything and had nothing to say, and arranged to take us for days out to museums and zoos and stately homes. We all knew that she would never come back for good. Ben’s mum did come back, after five years away and not a card for contact. One day she walked out and he stopped having a mummy, then five years later she reappeared, when Ben wa
s thirteen, as if nothing had happened, and Ben’s dad took her back without question or hesitation.
Ben’s an only child. You can always tell them from a mile away. They don’t understand that you can argue and make-up within minutes. They don’t understand that you can argue with somebody your own age and know it will be okay. They don’t understand divided attention. I think there should be posters in clinics and doctors’ surgeries and also petrol stations that read:
‘Whatever you do, have more than one child! Make it at least two or nothing!
‘Warning: Only children are monsters! Crime rates would be cut by ninety per cent if everybody had a brother or sister!’ I think that Ben might be different if he’d had a brother or sister. It might have made it easier when his mum left, or even when she came back. It would have stopped him feeling so alone. It’s like the world shut him out then and now he refuses to come back in.
When I reach Selfridges and push open the heavy doors, allowing a stream of ladies to leave before I enter, I feel the familiar breath of Selfridges’ air rush to kiss me hello. I nod hello back. Today I am in search of creams and potions to paint over the cracks before that crucial point when the cracks become too damn obvious, and no paint will do.
I don’t know the promise in all of their creams, the dreams they threaten to deliver and whether they ever come true. I don’t know how much of the science is real. I don’t know whether having a laboratory in France makes me believe their claims any more or less, but I believe that there is a power to positivism that can keep some of those lines at bay. Thinking that you are taking care of yourself, even if those creams are nothing but mayonnaise, is an advantage. You might smile more at least, and smile like you mean it.
I stop in front of the MAC counter: it’s a carnival, a riot, an underwater reef, vibrant and unexpected. My eyes swim across whole banks of colour, all things bright and beautiful: nail polish and eyeshadow, eye cream and eyeliner, mascara and brow brushes and brow colour and brow tint, lip tint, lipgloss, lipstick, lip-liner, lip plump, blusher, highlighter, foundation, concealer, light coverage, medium coverage, matt or gloss.
