Material Girl (27 page)

‘Well why else would you be here?’ she snaps.

I spritz her face with water, then toner, and wipe it gently with a muslin cloth, but very little comes with it. She isn’t wearing any make-up already.

‘No blues, only browns on my eyes, Lulu,’ she says firmly.

‘I was going to try a grey as well, to bring out the violet,’ I say.

She pauses for thought. ‘Okay, you can try that. We’ll see, we’ll see.’

We can both smell her fart, there isn’t room enough in here for us not to, there is nowhere for the smell to drift to
and nothing for it to hide behind. It smells musty, like damp silken wool. Dolly winces beneath my fingers.

I consider making up an excuse: that I’ve left something upstairs that I have to urgently run and retrieve, just to be out of this room and give her a chance to spray the smell away with lavender, but I don’t. She’ll live.

I squirt a perfecting serum onto my hand and dab it on with my middle finger around her eyes, to smooth out her lines. I pad the ball of my finger gently over her skin that is old and creamy and creased like the disturbed top layer of milk on the turn.

‘Much better today, Lulu,’ she says with her eyes closed.

‘What is?’ I ask, dabbing the serum around her lips as well, and on the lines that fold in her face like soft round paper creases, that run from the edge of her nostrils to the corners of her mouth.

‘Your outfit,’ she says, ‘I like your tie.’

I study her face as I take a handful of moisturiser and press my palms together to heat it. I don’t say anything.

‘I’m not being wicked, Lulu, I really do like it. You have character. You look like a principal boy! Ha!’

I knew it was too good to be true. I still don’t say anything.

‘No, seriously, darling,’ she says, as I press my warm palms onto her cheeks, then her forehead, then her nose, swapping the moisturiser from me to her. ‘I think that you look fun!’

‘Thanks,’ I say, but just to say something. I don’t mean it.

‘Well, darling, if you can’t take a compliment I won’t give you any more. Goodness, Lulu, don’t be so churlish. My mother told me when I was very young that compliments are like kisses – the best ones are unexpected. If I merely told you that, say, you look lovely, or wonderful, it would sound predictable, or worse, insincere, and it wouldn’t mean anything in the giving. Like giving chocolates at Christmas
or roses on Valentine’s Day, it would be an empty gesture. But you do look fun, and fun is the thing you should be called! You look like a girl to be around, today.’ Her words slur into each other slightly. ‘You do’ is ‘youdo’ instead.

‘Okay,’ I say, ‘thank you.’ I pat the last of the moisturiser into her skin in silence. Her breathing slows as Ella sings ‘Stormy Weather’ softly in the background.

‘Can I turn the light up now, just a little?’ I ask.

‘Just a little,’ she says.

I search the wall for the main light switch. It is a brand-new dimmer. It stands out on the wall like a patch of skin that was covered by a plaster during sunbathing, now ripped off to reveal the surrounding tan.

‘I got Gavin to put it in,’ she says, with her eyes half-open.

I turn it slowly.

‘That’s enough,’ she says firmly, as I am barely halfway to the level of light that I need.

‘Just a little more while I do the base maybe?’ I ask.

‘No, that’s enough,’ she says. ‘So. Tell me, Lulu, what you did with the rest of your day yesterday? I need some entertainment, I shall fall asleep again if not. I want to know what you young girls get up to.’

‘What do you want to know?’ I ask, rooting around absent-mindedly in my make-up box.

‘Well, for a start, did you make love?’

I am poised to trace away the thin grey bags that hang beneath her eyes with a Touche Éclat. My hand stops in midair.

‘No lovemaking yesterday, no.’

‘But do you make love often?’

‘How often is often?’ I put the tip of the brush to her skin.

‘Well that depends on how old you are, darling. Once
every five years would be reasonably often for me these days, and about as much as my old heart could take!’ She chuckles to herself. ‘But you young girls are at it like the Romans,’ she says, ‘I read it in the papers. Everybody is having sex these days.’

‘About once a month, I guess.’ That’s a lie, unless I am counting indiscretions. With Ben, that’s a lie. It’s been months.

‘Oh dear. Oh dear. Oh Lulu. That is a shame,’ she grimaces. ‘Don’t like it much? Or just not very good at it?’

I squeeze a worm of foundation onto my wrist and squash it angrily with a sponge before dabbing at her nose.

‘No, it’s not me. I’d like it far more often than I get it, given the option.’

‘But you’re a woman, darling, and women always have the option! A woman who wanted it every night of the week could get it – although God knows why she would – but if she did, she could get it. We have the option, we’re further removed from the instinct, darling, and we aren’t as animal as men. Why in heaven’s name do you believe that you don’t have the option?’

‘My boyfriend … well … he doesn’t like sex as much as I do.’

‘Is he homosexual?’ she asks frankly, as if enquiring about the price of milk. ‘There were a lot of them around in my day, parading as a good catch for a girl when they were far more interested in their golfing buddies!’

‘No, no. Not homosexual.’ I shake my head and laugh.

‘Are you sure, darling? I mean, have you actually asked him? Because a man who doesn’t like sex is hiding something.’

‘He’s not gay,’ I say, irritated, ‘we just don’t see each other very much, we keep really different hours.’

‘How different?’ she asks as I pad colour around her forehead. I’ve dragged back her hair with a thick black Alice
band. I half-expected clumps of it to fall off in my hand when I touched it, and would not have been at all surprised if she had been completely bald like one of Roald Dahl’s witches.

‘Just different. He works nine to five and I don’t.’ I don’t want to talk about this with her, she’s only using me for sport, she’ll just end up laughing at me anyway. And then she’ll drug me like the last poor fool. I change the subject. ‘So, to answer your question, what did I do yesterday afternoon? I went to see a friend,’ I say.

‘Where and why?’ she asks.

‘At her house and … because she is my friend.’

‘And how was your friend? And does she have a name?’

‘Her name is Helen and she was pretty miserable actually. Her husband’s mistress is pregnant, and her seventeen-year-old lover just tried to kill himself.’

I wait for a shocked gasp that doesn’t come. Instead she says, ‘I see,’ and her mouth curls up at the edges into a small smile. ‘How suburban, and exciting!’ she says wickedly.

‘Exciting is not the word I’d use,’ I reply, trying to dab away the red lines on her nose. The gin has had its effect. I squeeze a little green concealer onto my index finger and follow the lines of them where they crawl onto her cheeks.

‘But that’s why they are doing it, isn’t it, Lulu, for excitement? That would seem obvious to me. What did they expect?’

‘No, they … I don’t think … it’s complicated, and …’ I have stopped dabbing.

‘And while you are trying not to agree with me on that, darling, tell me this – what is this obsession with killing people these days? Or killing oneself? I understood it back in my day, with the homosexuals, or the bankrupt, the ones who couldn’t face it. It drove them to early drink and speed, and pipes and goodness knows what else had just come in on the boat from China, but today it’s so unnecessary.
I mean, we used to play at it all the time in those days, of course, but we always knew what we were doing – a handful of painkillers – but never valium, we all knew that – and a slug of gin, a tearful phone call and they’d all come running. But we never did ourselves any real harm.’

‘That’s a pretty big thing to play at,’ I say, mixing concealer with foundation on my wrist.

‘Oh but darling, you had to, all the new starlets were doing it. You had to get your name in the gossip rags somehow, and it was far more acceptable than it getting out that you were having an affair with a married man, or a studio boss. No, you had to get in the mags or they wouldn’t use you, you see, because you weren’t known. But you couldn’t get known for affairs with married men, darling, because it hurt your popularity, and then all the studio wives would tell all their studio husbands not to hire you, and then everything became far too hard. The smart girls knew that. Not that you weren’t having the affairs, of course, but it wasn’t news, it couldn’t be, the studios were too powerful back then, much more powerful than the public, much more powerful than some ten-cent rag full of tittle-tattle. So, you see, you had to have them write about you, darling, but it had to be the right things, and the bosses would never let their affairs get out. That stopped for a while, the tittle-tattle mags. But I see it’s started again, now, hasn’t it? I always felt terribly sorry for those girls, the desperate girls, taking their tops off in public, sleeping with whomever, wherever, whenever, and then spilling the beans. They didn’t realise, you see, that it wouldn’t get them work. They never got the parts, you see. Because back then, Lulu, you needed talent as well. You couldn’t get by on just your looks. Not
just
your looks. Now you can build a whole career out of it. It’s plainly wrong, of course. People think that’s all they have to
be. No wonder everybody’s got so fame-hungry, darling, when goodness knows, all you have to do these days is have a bit of surgery and hope that somebody likes the look of you. There’s no more to it than that, is there? These girls. Don’t they know they should have a talent as well? Their mothers should have told them that. Don’t put yourself in the firing line, naked, without a talent or something to shield you. Because by Christ they’ll want to shoot you down. If you’re naked, well? One shot will kill you. They can see where your heart is.’

I dust a large brush in translucent powder and circle it at her temples, onto her cheeks, and then down towards her chin. She sits in silence for a while.

‘I need my water,’ she says eventually. I pass her the glass. She knocks it back in one gulp with closed eyes. I put it on the side and say nothing.

‘Tell me more about you, Lulu. You say you have a chap and he’s not queer but he doesn’t like sex?’

‘I do have a chap … well … kind of …’ I flick a small flat brush into grey eyeshadow.

‘Well, do you or don’t you, darling, it’s an easy thing to answer, surely?’

‘I do. I do. But …’

I have a sudden urge to dump it all on this old wicked witch, everything that’s been churning through my head. I’ll watch her get shocked, choke on the gin she’s still slugging, shut her up, stop her asking questions.

‘I do, but I’ve cheated on him, quite a few times actually. And now the clinic that I went to, to get tested, for HIV,’ I say that bit loudly for effect, ‘want me to have a type of counselling. For having too much sex without protection. Slut counselling, Dolly!’

I stop and wait for her reaction. Her eyes don’t even open, don’t even flicker beneath her closed eyelids. I swirl my
Laura Mercier brush angrily into violet shadow, and blow it aggressively. But she doesn’t flinch.

I brush long strokes across her eyelids.

‘Well that sounds joyless, and I have no time for that at all. You should enjoy yourself! Have you thought about gin?’ she asks.

‘I think gin might be the problem. Or vodka, or red wine, any of them really.’

‘Darling, gin is never the problem! You might be the problem if you can’t take it. Besides, alcohol is no excuse for anything. Even the drunkest man wouldn’t kiss another man, if he wasn’t queer. You have to let yourself do things, even if you are drunk. I think maybe you just aren’t happy with your chap.’

I sigh. Nothing is going to shock her. I may as well be honest. If nothing else it will be a new opinion on an old mess, even if she does just tell me to stand by my man.

‘You’re right. I’m not happy with my chap.’

‘How long?’

‘How long what?’

‘How long have you been unhappy with your chap?’ she asks, exasperated.

‘Since a couple of months after I met him,’ I say, sighing with the relief of honesty. I haven’t been happy for a long time.

‘And how long have you been courting?’

‘Three years. Except it’s more than courting. We live together.’

‘Oh dear, Lulu, how did you get yourself in this mess? And if you aren’t happy, darling, then call me a silly old woman, but why on earth do you stay?’

Where is ‘stand by your man’? Did I miss it? I almost look behind me to see if I glimpse it shutting the door. ‘Because I love him,’ I say, a little confused that I should have to
explain that to her. She’s the old one, not me. I’m supposed to be the generation with the commitment issues.

I stop smudging white powder into the corners of her eyes. She opens them and looks at me.

‘And?’ she asks expectantly.

‘And what if I don’t love anybody else like I love him?’

She closes her eyes again. ‘We both know that’s not true, what a silly thing to say. Christ, Lulu, don’t be a silly girl. There is nothing worse than a silly girl. Don’t believe it, darling, this nonsense talk in the play: “
for me there are no others
”,’ she says theatrically, her voice rising and filling the room. ‘But there are always others, Lulu! This idea that there is just “one” person for anybody is damned ludicrous, I don’t know who came up with it. Of course you can meet somebody and they can fit perfectly and they can do it, maybe, if you like it that way, for the rest of your life. But that doesn’t mean there wouldn’t have been others. Of course there would! And there will be! I bet you just like the look of him, don’t you? Your chap. And that makes it harder to leave.’