Material Girl (17 page)

‘Because you are you, sweet Scarlet.’ I widen my eyes as he says my name, but then he puts his finger to his lips and says, ‘Shush. Just once, I won’t say it again. But if you were silly old Ben, there would be a choice, and it might be the one that he’s making.’

‘I don’t want that,’ I say flatly, ‘I don’t want to be with somebody who doesn’t want to get everything they can out of life.’

‘Well that’s YOUR choice,’ Tristan says.

I don’t want him to leave, I feel like I’ve had an epiphany.
I scramble quickly for something to say as he looks to stand up again.

‘So, Tristan, is it hard, you know, with your mother? I mean, you said, about her legs?’ Inside my head somewhere I grimace. That isn’t the best key-change I’ve ever made. Tristan, who is ready to take a swig on the ice at the bottom of his glass, stops with the rim at his lips. He tilts his black plastic Jackie O’s downwards and looks up at me, so that I can see the reds of his eyes.

‘Of course it’s fucking hard, Make-up, she can’t walk. She can’t get out of her bed on her own. She can’t get herself in and out of the bath.’

‘Oh … I’m sorry, Tristan … I didn’t mean to sound flippant or … Of course, I’ll shut up now.’

He pushes himself to his feet. ‘Perspective, Make-up. That’s what you need.’

‘Okay. I know. I mean, your problems are still your problems, but I know. Perspective.’

‘And dedication.’

‘That’s what you need?’ I ask.

He smiles and mouths ‘cheer the fuck up’ as he saunters off towards the champagne in the corner, popping his empty glass onto the bar as he goes so that he can stretch out his arms to hug and welcome all the new friends he’s about to make with the orange-labelled bottle of fizz.

I glance down at my tights to check for runs, and think about getting another drink. A second later Gavin slumps down in the spot Tristan has just vacated, as well as the spot next to it that has luckily just emptied out as well. From our vantage spot we eye the room, an unhappy audience.

‘You know I said she wasn’t easy?’ Gavin begins, staring straight ahead.

‘Yep.’ He is talking about Arabella, and I glance around to see if I can spot her.

‘Case in point.’ Gavin points to the end of the bar. She is leaning back against it with her elbows on either side of her super-slim torso. Her small pointed breasts jut out in her silky white top, which has been tucked tightly into her purple trousers. It’s car-crash fashion, despite her beauty. I am always amazed that most actresses can’t dress themselves. Stylists do a remarkable job of convincing the rest of us that these rare beauties always look amazing, but it’s an utter lie. If they were left to their own devices the red carpet would resemble a catwalk of ugly chiffon chaos. Don’t be deceived. But still I gasp. Arabella’s top is transparent in the spotlight that has sought her out in this dim little bar, and you can clearly see the small, dark-stained circles of her nipples. She giggles with Tom Harvey-Saint, who leans in like a predator, breathing on her neck as she strokes it with thin, elegant fingers. I wait for him to bare his teeth like fangs and plunge them into her flesh. She clinks her champagne glass with his, oblivious to the danger, or loving it. He senses his audience and glances over in our direction, raising his glass to Gavin and me. I shudder.

‘What the hell was that?’ Gavin asks, looking from me to Tom, his voice showing traces of angry disgust.

‘I don’t know. He’s a complete prick, it doesn’t matter’ I say hastily, and furious with myself for being caught looking. ‘But Gavin, I think you should go and speak to Arabella, you can completely see through her top!’

‘I know,’ he says evenly.

‘No, Gavin, I’m serious. You can see her nipples and everything!’

‘I’ve already told her. She doesn’t care. She says it doesn’t matter, and it’s dark.’

‘It’s not THAT dark,’ I reply, pleading with him. I notice other people looking over at her, comically double-taking as they realise what’s visually on offer.

‘I know,’ he says, ‘but what more can I do?’

Gavin has bought me a drink and pushes a red wine into my hand, taking the empty glass out of it first. We lazily clink our glasses and take a desperate simultaneous gulp of our drinks.

‘Do you think there are bigger questions to be asked, Gavin?’ I turn to face him. He is staring down at his shirt, examining a button.

‘What is infinity?’ he suggests.

‘Not that kind of big,’ I say.

‘Who’s the fattest man that ever lived to fifty?’ he asks.

‘Not that kind of big, Gavin,’ I repeat.

‘Mars, Jupiter, Saturn … Uranus … which one is … you know … bigger?’

‘For the love of God, Gavin, not that kind of big! I’m talking about the “but why”s, the “I don’t want to do this any more”s, the “it doesn’t feel like enough”s!’

‘None of which sound half as much fun as my fat man conversation would be,’ he says, trying not to look at the bar as I hear Arabella shriek with theatrical laughter. Her bony bare arms fly in and out of my eye-line as Tom spins her around to music that has suddenly piped up from soft speakers. Barry White croons ‘Just The Way You Are’ dimly out from the corners of the room, barely audible enough for us to hear it, but loud enough for Tom and Arabella to seize the chance to rub up against each other.

I sigh. Gavin sighs.

‘When I was a little girl,’ I say, ‘there was Prince Charming. There was a book and there was Prince Charming, and he was handsome and he wanted to marry the princess. He didn’t want to live with her and see, or move in, or use her, or split the rent, but not make any big decisions because he wasn’t ready for that kind of commitment.’

‘No! No!’ Gavin violently hits his forehead with the base of his hand in mock stupidity, but it looks like it hurts and it leaves a red mark.

‘What’s wrong?’ I ask, appalled.

‘No more relationship shit, Scarlet! Don’t you get tired of it? Doesn’t it exhaust you?’

It does, but I can’t help it. I try and make myself think of other things, but it’s like an ebbing tide. Just as I manage to drift into a whole other topic, this huge wave of confusion crashes back over me, and I remember that I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. I am constantly desperate to talk about it with anybody, in search of some elusive truth, but I’m not going to admit that to Gavin: he will undoubtedly leave and I can’t sit here and talk to myself!

‘Wait! Gavin, it’s not relationship shit, it’s different I promise! I’m going somewhere else completely with this! Wait! Don’t go!’

He eyes me suspiciously, sitting up, ready to leave.

‘Is it going to John Barnes?’ he asks. ‘Or Steve Ovett versus Steve Cram versus Seb Coe – who’d win now?’

‘Coincidentally, yes it is,’ I say, nodding my head and smiling.

‘You’re lying,’ he replies, shaking his.

‘Well you’ll have to wait and see.’

‘No I won’t,’ he says, but then, ‘Jesus!’

Arabella is rubbing noses with Tom, as they eat separate ends of a Twiglet, working their way into the middle.

I grab Gavin’s hands and pull him towards me so that we are facing each other. He is really heavy. I think me
and
a friend could sit in one of those palms.

‘Gavin, look at me! Don’t do anything, don’t say anything to her, that’s what she wants. Just sit here and have my conversation.’

He seems genuinely bewildered and upset by her behaviour. I’m starting to realise that Gavin is a bit squishy on the inside, like a marshmallow cake. I worry for him. That’s no way to be today, that’s no recipe for modern love.

‘Okay, talk,’ he says, ‘but no crying.’

‘Okay.’ I swipe my hair away from my face, and compose myself. ‘You tell me, Gavin: what is the point in fairytales, other than to cause inexorable harm? I think that they are the work of the devil. They are pure evil. They promise children, young girls mostly, a version of the world that doesn’t exist, and they do it when you are at your most vulnerable and impressionable age.’

I stare at Gavin for a response but he just shrugs his shoulders, so I continue. ‘You know when somebody tells you something when you are young that is crazy, but you always kind of believe it? For instance, my brother Richard told me when I was about seven and he was about four that babies came out of women’s belly buttons, and part of me still thinks it’s true.’

Gavin looks at me like I am crazy.

‘I know that it’s not true, Gavin, but I sort of still believe it as well. And my dad told me you should never squeeze a spot on your forehead, or anywhere above your eyebrow, because all the evil nasty yuk in it will go back into your head and you’ll get brain poisoning! And you know what? I still don’t touch a spot above my eyebrow, because it still scares me! My point is that I believed all that stuff, and in the same way I believed in Prince Charming. I believed in Snow White and the dwarves and the apple and the Prince, and Cinderella and her stepmother and her ugly sisters and the Prince, but now I find that it’s just not true! They were all lies. Of course the stories themselves were made up, but the sentiment, the same sentiment that ran through all of them, was a big fat huge bastard lie! I know that any innocence that I do have left is just about clinging on for dear life, although it is being kicked out of me daily, and any naïvety that I had left took the last tube out of here a long time ago. But still – STILL! – I can’t quite shake those stories
off. I know there is no such thing as Prince Charming, but part of me is still demanding to know where mine is? Has his horse got a flat hoof? Where the hell is he? And I don’t expect him to be wearing velvet jodhpurs, or have that long, weird Prince hair that they always had in the books. But I was kind of hoping that I’d meet somebody nice, who’d be nice to me, and who’d love me and let me love them. That’s really all I want. But … I’m starting to think he’s not coming. Or maybe he just found some other girl, in some other forest, and decided she’d do. Everything that I’ve seen at the cinema, or heard sung on the radio, or read late at night, has just perpetuated a big fat lie. The same romantic myth has pervaded my life from day one, and I feel like somehow I was supposed to realise and see past it. But why wouldn’t I believe it, why wouldn’t it be real?’

‘Oh my God.’ Gavin stares at me in alarm. ‘Dolly is going to tear you to pieces,’ he says, but as if he is reading my pizza order back down the phone to me.

‘Maybe. Do you know if she was ever in musicals, Gavin?’

‘I don’t. I haven’t heard her sing.’ He shrugs and gulps his scotch sour.

‘I have always loved musicals. I used to watch them with my mum. She loved
Calamity Jane
. Have you seen it?’

Gavin shakes his head and examines his drink. I may as well be talking to myself.

‘I love the fact that she wasn’t the pretty one, but then all of a sudden she was! It was magical. Nobody loved her, then everybody did, and it was just make-up and a dress. A woman’s touch, that’s what they called it, and it’s powerful stuff. I really saw the value, you know, in being beautiful, in showing the world what you’ve got, making the best of yourself. But now … now it means too much. Now, when I lose it, maybe I don’t have anything. You know I shouted at some prick today for wearing a T-shirt that I hated? It said, “
Don’t ask
if you’re ugly
”. But I believe it, Gavin. I called him a prick, but I do agree, just a little. An ugly shouldn’t ask him out, he won’t say yes. We all know it, and she’ll just get hurt because he’ll laugh in her face. We can say whatever we want about personality but it only means so much. Pretty people have more choices, and more freedom to be loveable and kind and sweet because everybody loves them first. They aren’t bitter because there is nothing to be bitter about – they got the aces in the deck, the genetic luck. Do you know what he called me? The prick in the T-shirt? “Just a pair of tits” – and do you know what’s the most humiliating thing? Part of me believes him.’

Gavin glances up at me from his drink with surprise.

‘You need to believe in yourself a bit more than that, Scarlet. You’ve got a great job, you’re your own boss, you’re a success. You’re certainly more than tits. And just because you look good doesn’t mean that’s all you are either. Men see more than that. Granted it might take them a while, but you have to interest each other as well.’

I smile. It’s the age-old male argument – you have to interest us, you have to make us laugh. They don’t mean it. I have had my fair share of men talking at me and not to me, and ignoring a girl in the corner with glasses or a vast arse. They weren’t so interested in what I had to say, half of them weren’t even listening. I ask myself which is better: looking a certain way that results in being asked out by twenty men in one night who have no idea who you are or what you stand for and who just like the look of you, which generally means they want sex, or … looking another way that results in being asked out by just one guy, an average-looking guy, but a guy who has taken the time to chat to you because you weren’t surrounded by good-looking losers, and who has decided that he’d like to spend more time with you to find out who you are … Answers on a postcard
addressed to Scarlet White, The Majestic Theatre, Covent Garden.

‘I think that one of the main differences between men and women is that women are ultimately looking for love, and men have to have it take them by surprise. Women are warmed up and stretched and ready on the sidelines. Men need it to fall on their heads and knock them out before they realise it.’