by Louise Kean
The cast and a couple of the crew stare in shock and awe at Tristan, who is oblivious to the shift from light to dark and the small man risking death above him as he dances about before the chorus like Barnum, his clove cigarette aglow and spitting like a Catherine wheel. He circles the group as he talks, and the creak of wooden chairs punctuates his conversation as they shift heavily in their seats to follow him with their eyes, craning their necks as all five feet five of him disappears from view. Some of them ‘tut’ under their breath as he flies off again in a different direction. Eyes occasionally roll. Bottoms shift uncomfortably. Somebody sighs. It’s hot in here.
Dolly sits upright in the middle of them all, like a totem pole. She looks composed in a purple towelling turban, with a green and gold peacock brooch parading across its front. She glances down at her rings, sliding the amber up and down and up and over her knuckle. Tom Harvey-Saint has positioned himself back to front on his chair, with a calculated ease, his folded arms resting across its back. His pose makes me shudder, he thinks he’s Marlon Brando, and maybe he is. Maybe Marlon Brando started out just like this, and a Make-up in the Fifties stood to one side and shuddered at the sight of him, and the memory of him in her. Tom is wearing a maroon Fred Perry polo shirt and an expensive-looking suit jacket with faded jeans. He looks like a mod or a football hooligan, it’s a uniform of fashionable violence. He tries to catch Arabella’s eye, and occasionally she lets him. She sits opposite Tom, looking beautiful but bizarre in a T-shirt that is the halfway bright blue of nothing in nature, and a long brown ruffled skirt with autumnal gypsy flowers twisting along its hem. She should thank God that she is beautiful; it is as if a three-year-old dressed her for fun. But she is, without question, stunning. Her nose is so strong, her eyes so deep and bright. Maybe some would call her handsome. She’s a handsome woman, they say, about girls that ride horses, or hold it together under pressure. Politicians’ wives – they are generally handsome women. The ones who stand stoically by their husbands after exposed affairs. Maybe it’s an old woman’s greatest compliment? You don’t hear old ladies described as pretty. They were pretty, people say, or she must have been beautiful in her time. But never ‘they are pretty now’. Apart from Sophia Loren. She will always, somehow, be it by the grace of God or a deal with the devil, or both when the other looked away, be beautiful. Dolly has a presence that cannot be ignored, but any audience would admit that she hasn’t been beautiful for some years. When does pretty stop being pretty? Thirty? Thirty-one, probably.
Tristan is wearing the material he was clutching yesterday that I thought at the time might be a pillowcase. It is, in fact, a thigh-length Japanese kimono that sticks to his black trousers with static electricity. I can see tufts of wiry black chest hair scrambling to escape the silk as he becomes increasingly more animated, his arms thrown around without care, the movement loosening the silk knot, edging the kimono open. He has swapped his Jackie O’s for a small black hat with netting at the front, the kind my Aunt Nancy would wear to a funeral, frowning at any woman there without a hat on, like the dead care what’s on your head.
Tristan has been chain-smoking clove cigarettes for over an hour, and you can hear it in his voice. I think a tiny team of nicotine goblins are at work at the back of his throat, sawing off his tonsils with sheets of goblin sandpaper.
He stops and coughs violently, composes himself, smiles to himself, and carries on.
‘So, it’s about love … and loss. In fact it should be the other way around. It’s about loss … and love. We mustn’t forget how much she’s lost. The violent quiet screaming pounding at your chest, and in your head – your blood ceaselessly pumping that ache around your body – the ache that you feel when you lose the one you love. Yeah? “The dew of the morning sank chill on my brow, it felt like the warning of what I feel now.” Yes? Byron, anybody?’
The understudies all nod enthusiastically, but the cast don’t blink. Tristan shakes his head but goes on.
‘Imagine it. The masochism and the sadism rolled into one. It’s you and it’s your lover, you’ve joined forces, ganging up on your heart, to break it. You know it. It’s pure pain. But there are no knives, no car crashes, no guns, no blood, no bombs, no stabbings, no dismembered limbs or open wounds or splintered bones. No obvious signs of pain. No blood! But Christ it hurts,’ he whispers and shakes his head, ‘because you allow it in, invite it in to hurt you, and so it hurts even more. It shouldn’t but, God, it does, and it does, and it does. It hurts you more! You cry because you can’t control it, there are no drugs. And there is no science. Why does it hurt so much?’ he asks himself, not us, as he shakes his bewildered head.
I don’t put my hand up, I don’t have an answer. I’m scared of pain. Today it’s the warning of pain that, like clouds hanging over the next town, looms a little way away. And I feel like I’m sitting on a tube train that has just burst out from a tunnel, from Barons Court to Hammersmith at six o’clock on a September afternoon into a squinting, eye-streaming sunset. I’ve been underground for a while but I can feel myself in motion again now, moving slowly towards those clouds hanging over Ealing, and my tube is on a go-slow, shunting me along, leaving my clear sky behind. It has to be done. It wouldn’t do to sit on that train, in the station, forever.
‘This old dying monster,’ Tristan says, gesturing with a smile at Dolly. I wonder how she’ll take that, but she doesn’t blink. ‘She’s lost her love. “For me there were no others!” she says. But, not only that, not only that which would be enough to ruin us all, here, now: she’s lost herself as well. This acclaimed beauty! This international screen idol and glory! Age has stripped her away, and what does she have left?’ Tristan shakes his head. I have involuntarily taken a step back, anticipating an explosion from the totem pole in the middle of the room. I don’t know the play – is Tristan talking about her character or Dolly herself? I think I should probably grab one of the scripts that are lying around and have a read …
‘She has the memory of beauty. When the mirror loved her so did the world, and neither one of them cares any more. Christ! Imagine it. The world that loved you loses interest in you, and through no fault of your own, for no reason other than you’ve got older. Imagine it! And then you tell me, because I don’t know, I haven’t worked it out yet, but honestly: do we only value the things we have because inevitably we lose them? And I don’t just mean beauty, that goes for the people that we love too. Can love only exist in the terrified face of ultimate loss? If we knew with some certainty, and at any time, and with any one person, that eventually that person would leave, but that love would come and find us again but bigger, brighter, stronger, would we still cry? Do we forget more easily than we’d like to believe? Was it really love at all if the feeling passes? Or simply habit? Or a phase? Is it better to have loved and lost? Really? I’m not sure, I’m not sure. “For me there were no others,” she says. It’s acceptance. It’s reasonable. It’s her truth. “I know, madame, he said, but for the others there are others.” But whose responsibility are they? Am I only responsible for my own heart, or for the hearts of the ones I love too? Or for anybody’s heart, everybody’s heart! So then, where was I? We are nearly done, nearly done, I know it’s hot in here. We know our lines, but we need to know it. We need to feel the torture, revel in the madness of a beauty turned rotten and a life passed, as she sits and waits for death. It’s pervasive, that sense of loss. It hangs over the entire play, and we need it to swell up and infect our audience. Christ! It’s not a happy play, I know that, but then where is the drama in happiness? The evil that men do. The evil that men do! The evil that women do too, of course. But I leave you with these final questions: Can love only exist with loss? And is true beauty only ever temporary?’
I spot Tom and Arabella trying to suppress their giggles like school kids who would rather laugh than admit they don’t understand. They may as well be chewing gum and writing each other love notes. I don’t understand what he is talking about either, really, but I
am sure that Tristan does, and they should try to at least! They are supposed to be trained actors. I won’t laugh at what somebody believes, if they believe it that much, with such passion. Passion is so rare these days. He might seem crazy, but it’s still inspiring.
I see Tom mouth to Arabella, ‘Who is this fucking guy?’ and she bites her finger to stop from giggling. Tristan is oblivious. ‘I heard he was a bloody genius?’ Tom mouths, shrugging his shoulders and raising his eyes. She snorts a laugh, and quickly coughs to try to cover it up. Tristan glances over absent-mindedly but doesn’t realise what they are saying, and I am glad. I don’t want him to see them laughing. They might be pretty but they are stupid, too. As is often the way.
Gavin leans on a brushed velvet panel on the opposite side of the room with his long arms crossed and a stern expression. He looks very Scottish today, although of course he still isn’t. Gavin stares at Arabella as she flirts with Tom. I can sense his fury, it seems to be thudding at his temples, but the rest of his face is as emotionless as always. Gavin stares. The cast begins to chat amongst themselves, and I flap over towards him in argumentative shoes: they are having a running battle with my feet, and I am not sure who is winning. But they go with this outfit – today I am wearing cream knee-length tailored city shorts with bare brown legs and a black shirt with a big collar and short sleeves, and a loose purple and cream piano tie that I bought from my favourite second hand shop off Neal Street. My hair is pulled back, day-old dirty and loose in a knot with blonde strands making a break for it all over my head like twisted willow, and I’m wearing thick black-rimmed glasses instead of contact lenses. My lipgloss is called ‘Raspberry Split’ and my toes are sometimes the only things clinging me desperately into my black 1970s open-toed wedges, the argumentative shoes, but I love this outfit. It makes me smile. No doubt Dolly will say ‘Ha!’ when she sees me, and hate everything about it.
I don’t know how to say what I want to say to Gavin, as I watch him so painfully loving somebody who doesn’t love him back, so I put my arms around his waist instead – they are a mile from meeting at the other side! – and squeeze him like an overripe orange.
I see Arabella glance over with disinterest, and then double-take. We haven’t been properly introduced yet and she throws me a look so dirty it should be wrapped in black plastic and sitting on the top shelf.
‘She’s a silly girl,’ I whisper to Gavin. ‘Beautiful but silly. She doesn’t know a good man when she sees one.’
He glances down at me with derision, and scoffs a laugh as if I’ve just spoken to him in Estonian or Cantonese and he doesn’t understand a word of it. But looking up at him seconds later I see the traces of a smile at the corners of his mouth, and he doesn’t pull away from my hug. I hope this means we are friends again.
I squeeze him hard around the middle like I’m trying to get the last drops of juice out of my huge orange, and let go, leaning back against the velvet again, exhausted. Squeezing a big man can be tiring! Tristan looks over at us and smiles sadly.
‘“Nor can I blame thee, though it be my lot, to strongly, wrongly, vainly, love thee still,”’ he says to Gavin and I loudly above the throng of his school-kid cast. Gavin looks as blank as I do and I want to hug him again, for being here, which means I am not the only stupid one.
‘Byron! It’s Byron! Anyone? Anyone!’ Tristan asks, shaking his head and rolling his eyes. Gavin and I shrug apologetically in unison.
‘So!’ Tristan shouts, and claps his hands. ‘Let’s crack on with scene one again after lunch. This is all just final timings now, we know we’re there, but! And here’s the thing. After lunch, I think we all need to be topless. Half-dressed. Yeah? Yeah?’
The chattering of the cast screeches to a halt, followed by the sudden and audible ‘swish’ of fifteen necks twisting sharply, flipping their owners’ features through the air to face Tristan. This is followed by a united gasp, and then silence. Dramatic silence. Tristan smiles.
‘I realised you wouldn’t go for the naked thing, which is, you know, the optimum. But we need to lose our inhibitions. Don’t we? Plus, you know, it’s hot in here! But we need to shed a little skin, a little of this armour, this defence we build up around ourselves to protect ourselves. We must not be afraid. We need to scramble into our characters now. We can’t be afraid! Because fear,’ dramatic pause, slow head-turn around the room at everybody present, theatrical nodding, ‘is the enemy.’
He wears a gentle smile to soften the blow, and holds his hands out at his sides, palms facing the ceiling, like Jesus at the Last Supper in every painting I’ve ever seen of it, except Jesus wasn’t Hindi, or wearing a Romford Market kimono and an old lady’s hat. Not in the pictures I’ve seen, at least.
‘Don’t be scared,’ he says. ‘Don’t be scared to let go, or to cry! You can’t be scared to take your top off! It’s just a top! It’s just a torso, we’ve all got them!’ He tugs violently at the hair on his chest and I wince because it looks like it hurts. ‘Don’t be scared! Don’t be scared to kiss a boy, or to kiss a girl, to say what you think, to love a little or live a little or do what you want to do! You mustn’t be scared! As I said to Marco Rodriguez, who played a wonderful Maria in my Sound of Music – “You can’t be scared to be a nun!” And he was, at first. But then he found her. Through bravery and honesty he found the nun inside of him. And fuck me if it wasn’t the best damn rendition of “The Hills Are Alive” I’ve ever heard! Don’t be scared, boys and girls. As long as it’s legal in the Netherlands, don’t be scared to try it!’
He claps his hands again and smiles. The end.
‘Lulu,’ Dolly screams from the centre of the stage. The heads swish inwards. It takes me a moment to remember she is talking to me, as everybody else mutters and looks around, confused.
‘Hi?’ I say, stepping forwards.
‘Lulu?’ Tom Harvey-Saint says. ‘I thought her name was Scarlet?’
‘I’m going to sleep for an hour now, darling. Come and do me then. In an hour! Stop grappling with your big new beau and set your watch, Lulu, I only need an hour. Wake me with a coffee. We need to get going.’
‘She left out the “Irish” in “coffee”,’ Gavin whispers to save us both from embarrassment, and re-crosses his arms. ‘Lulu?’ he asks me.
‘It’s a … well, it’s a short story actually. She thinks that Scarlet is a violent whore’s name. So I’ve had to change it, for her.’ I shrug like that’s reasonable.
‘Whose idea was Lulu? It’s the name I’d call my favourite cow if I lived on a farm,’ he says, with the tone of a bank manager declining me a loan.
‘My mum, who left home when I was a little girl, calls me Lulu when she tells me that she loves me,’ I say, raising my eyebrows.
Gavin doesn’t reply but looks as bashful as his generally expressionless face will allow. Why is a man with no expression in theatre? Or is he vital? Is Gavin, in fact, the antidote to the poison of their hamminess that would have killed me by now if it weren’t for him?
‘See, Gavin, it’s not just me that can say hurtful and unbelievably stupid things, is it?’
‘It is mostly you,’ he says.
‘That’s fair enough. Am I your favourite cow now?’
‘Shut up,’ he responds blankly.
Dolly pushes herself to her feet and makes her way down the steps at the side of the stage. Gavin takes a couple of paces forward but she waves him away.
‘Who is that ridiculous man?’ she mutters loudly, addressing nobody. ‘What was all that guffaw? All that dancing around? Olivier never danced around! Where’s my script? Somebody tell him I’m not taking my damned shirt off for anybody. I haven’t been nude in public for nineteen years and I’m not going to start again now!’
‘Scarlet,’ Tom Harvey-Saint shouts down from the stage. ‘If that is in fact your real name!’ His laugh is without charm, like a teenage boy spotting bare breasts on late-night TV.
‘Yes?’ I ask, already irritated.
‘You c
an do me now instead.’ He gestures with his head to the side of the stage, and I think I hear him whistle. Gavin and I glance at each other in alarm.
‘Did he just whistle at me?’ I ask Gavin.
‘I wouldn’t like to say.’ He looks angry.
‘Why would you whistle at somebody who’s about to wave a mascara wand near your eyes?’ I ask.
Gavin comes close to a smile.
My wedges fight my toes down the stairs backstage, but what price five foot seven? Tom is already in his room when I get there. The door is flung open dramatically, and he sits centre stage, waiting for applause. It’s a shoebox, an old school cupboard with bad plumbing that gurgles loudly like an angry, stupid child. There are bare stone walls and two bright exposed bulbs dangle dustily from the ceiling. Tom has stuck a poster on the wall where a window should be, but isn’t. It’s a poster of himself and a thin blonde girl who I vaguely recognise. They are both staring seriously at the camera, wearing dark suits, with crossed arms and legs slightly apart, like police investigators who stand in TV posters. In real life, when police investigators talk at press conferences when a child has just been snatched or a city broker’s body found, they always disappoint me. They never stand the way they are supposed to – kind of mean and firm, depressed but determined – and they are never sexual. Every police investigator on the force, on TV, is leading a troubled sex life. The real ones always look far too exhausted and ordinary to do it more than once a month with their husband or wife of fifteen years.
