Material Girl (33 page)

‘Tristan isn’t gay, he’s a … he isn’t gay,’ I say.

‘Ha! Of course he’s gay, I’ve met few gayer! Whatever line he has spun you, don’t believe it. Believe what you feel, what you instinctively feel, Lulu – if you think a man is gay they generally are.’

‘But he said …’

‘Men say a lot of things, Lulu, you should believe about a quarter of it. The other three-quarters are rubbish. Half is trying to get you into bed, and the last quarter is fear. Men are scared of lots of things and they haven’t found a decent way of hiding it yet, darling. Bravado, machismo, whatever you want to call it, it’s all just fear. But not the queers. They’ve faced their fears, darling, and come out the other side. It’s why they are so attractive to a woman.’

‘Do you actually loathe men, Dolly?’ I ask.

‘No, Lulu, far, far from it. I love men, wretched as they are, ruinous as they can be for most girls, terrible and mixed up and confused and scared, and petrified of anybody needing them and terrified of not being needed! But I, personally,
have never had any interest in fear. I was never scared. I showed no interest in them, which is what got them every time. Of course, then, when they were desperate and needy, it repelled me even more. But it taught me an easy lesson, Lulu: If a man gets what he wants too easily he thinks he should have tried for something better, that he has set his sights too low. A lot of them will walk away from women that love them purely because they do love them, and these stupid boys get confused and think that they can obviously do better. But I was rude to them, and stubborn in my disinterest, and it made them think I was better than they were, and of course there was no better or worse, it’s like peaches and bananas. Yes I was violently rude a lot of the time, and frank and honest and vile, and they often loved me for it. I approve of a necessary violence, you see, emotive violence, and physical violence as well if needs must. Sometimes it is your only source of protection, Lulu.’

Dolly opens one eye comically to look at me, and then closes it again. I circle highlighter at her temples.

‘So you are basically saying that you hurt men? Is that right? You used them?’ I don’t feel like softening any blows today.

‘Often I did, I suppose, I did use them, but not once they loved me, that is plainly wrong.’

‘But you used them before that? And that’s not wrong?’

‘Yes, darling, but I couldn’t help that. They kept hurling themselves at me like lemmings off a cliff, I couldn’t get out of the way quick enough some days! Ha!’ She slaps her thigh and kicks off her shoes like a girl.

I shake my head. ‘You see I just don’t think it’s necessary to hurt people like that. You can take responsibility for your actions. You can be honest enough to walk away before it hurts them too much. It’s just … wrong to do anything else.’

Dolly grabs my hands as I move towards her with lip plump, and claps them together, sandwiched between hers. I can feel her age in the cold wrinkles in her palms pressing on my skin. She smells of mothballs and lavender and soap and alcohol.

‘But Lulu, you say it like it’s deliberate! Do you know how very few people are malicious and cold and mean?’ She shakes my hands to make me understand. ‘People don’t want to hurt other people, they just can’t help it. We are animals, darling, life is going to be painful. I never really meant to hurt anybody, but I did. Christ, I did, over and over.’ She throws my hands away and shrugs. ‘And I got hurt too, Lulu, oh yes. It didn’t kill me! And who says it’s so bad, just because it makes you cry? Who says crying is so bad, when something really hurts? Good heavens, Lulu, what do you think love is? It’s just habit, darling, it’s just habit. Finding somebody who makes you laugh, and doesn’t kiss like a circus ape, and weaving them into your life like yarn. What did you think it was going to be, darling? Obsession? Obsession isn’t healthy. Or trying to please somebody who can’t be pleased, like your chap by the sounds of it. And trying to make somebody care about you who doesn’t want to, like your chap. But Lulu, that’s not your fault, darling! You just don’t fit him. Not loving somebody is just not accepting part of their character, and he doesn’t want to accept part of yours. Love isn’t the unexplainable at all. It’s easily explained! Declaring to somebody, ‘I don’t love you’, or ‘I don’t love you any more’, like some kind of metaphysical argument that needs no definition. Well, Christ, darling! That’s not an answer to anything. What is it that you think love is?’

I stand and think and search for an answer. It’s not even liking somebody a lot, but then it kind of is. I think about the people that I can say that I love. I love my daddy because he is my daddy, in spite of his distance, perhaps sometimes
because of it? Knowing that he loves me anyway but doesn’t find it easy to express makes me want to protect him from anybody that would try to force it out of him. I love Richard because he’s my brother and because he is so easy to love, and he is obviously so in love with Hannah, and his boys, and his life. Richard met Hannah at sixth-form college, they were childhood sweethearts and their love happened the way that it does in romantic films. They fell for each other before they learnt about cynicism. They sat next to each other in A-level maths. They became friends. They sat in Richard’s Ford Fiesta outside Hannah’s house in the evening and talked. They only ever really stood out to each other, but they are a team. Richard is the only real-life example that I have, that I cling to desperately, to prove to me that romantic love actually can happen, and be real.

I love my mum so much, because she’s my mum, and because she didn’t really leave. She took me with her, every night at ten p.m., and every weekend, when she could have just walked away and enjoyed herself and kicked up her heels and travelled the world. I always knew, maybe more so because she didn’t live with me, that she loved me. She didn’t have to call me every night, but she did. She didn’t have to get tears in her eyes every Sunday night when my dad came to pick me and Richard up, but she did. But I don’t really know what it is about their characters that means I love them or not, because just knowing that they love me isn’t enough to love somebody back. I don’t know how to choose to love somebody or not. I love Helen because she is my best friend and she has a good heart, and she makes me laugh, and she has always been there, always. I just love the people I am supposed to. Maybe they don’t do everything I’d like them to, and maybe I don’t either, for them. And maybe me and my daddy wouldn’t even be friends in another life, maybe we’d drive each other crazy. But I love him because he’s mine.
Dolly looks at me expectantly. She is waiting for an answer. What is it that I think love is?

‘I don’t know. I don’t.’ I shake my head and feel like a fool. ‘And I don’t know what to say when Ben won’t say that he loves me, or can’t say he loves me at least.’ I feel my shoulders slump, the fight draining from me.

‘Oh no, darling, you got it right the first time. It’s not “can’t” say it, darling, it’s “won’t”. Know that, if nothing else. It seems to me, Lulu, that you are infinitely loveable. It seems to me that you are welling over with love for this chap. I don’t think there is anything about you that he can’t love, Lulu. You’re not a wet fish of a girl, you’re not a silly girl, as silly as you might occasionally seem. It seems to me, Lulu, that you have a bit of a fire to you, a lot of life. It’s not “can’t”, darling, it’s “won’t”.’

‘Okay, won’t. But what difference does it make, it’s the same result. Maybe he just doesn’t take me seriously enough to even try to love me, or think that he might. There is something about me, or him, or who he was, or who he is, that stops him seeing us as a real thing, with possibilities and a future. I don’t know if he’s serious about me, can you believe that? After three years, Dolly! But we live together, how can he not be serious?’

I am standing, tired and helpless, in front of her. She reaches behind her and yanks out a cushion, and throws it on the floor.

‘Take those stupid shoes off and sit down, darling,’ she says. ‘You need the rest.’

I do as she says. I cross my legs like a little girl in assembly and stare up at her.

‘Oh Lulu. Men can do many things and not be serious about the girl they are dating. They can even marry a girl, standing next to her at the altar with a rose in their lapel and a top hat under their arm, and not be serious about a
girl. They think it’s fine as long as they are getting what they want.’

‘Which is?’ I ask, desperate to know.

‘Often no more than somebody to fuck when they feel like fucking, darling. That is brutal, I know, but I believe it. Don’t forget that they are closer to animals than we are. Maybe that’s what your chap was doing with you, except now of course he doesn’t even feel like fucking, ha! That’s it. No more emotional investment than that. They’ll keep you at arm’s length and treat your courtship like something that is second, third, fourth, fifth on their list of priorities. Their friends will come before you, and their work, and their sports, so many things. Because they just aren’t taking you seriously. I’ve seen it happen to girls a hundred times, the girls like you, who loved somebody willingly and openly and tragically, really, darling. And of course it’s fine, darling, to not love somebody, to place them low on your list, if you both feel the same. If it suits both parties I mean. But you take your chap quite seriously, Lulu.’ She smiles at me sadly.

‘I do. I do.’

‘And he knows it I’m sure. And maybe he even hates himself a little too, for the way that he is treating you, darling, but that’s not good enough, because it’s his choice. If he spots for even one second that you might be in love with him, then a man who respects women would do the honourable thing. Step up to the plate and take it seriously, or walk away. Do you want to know what I think, in all my years, is the worst thing in the world, Lulu?’

I nod my head.

‘To knowingly use a person that loves you. For whatever reason. For nothing more than amusement, or weekend sport. That is the difference! Right there, on the table, bang!’ She slaps the counter suddenly with a wide open palm, and it makes a noise that stings the air, and I jump.

‘That is a man who doesn’t care that he hurts you. We all hurt people unintentionally, Lulu, and it is forgivable. But to see it, know it, do it anyway? That’s the worst a man can do. Yes, the worst thing a man can do is treat a woman like weekend sport. Because he knows how much it hurts you, deeply. Especially you, Lulu, look at you, you’re like a pretty puppy.’ She takes my hand. ‘A woman will throw everything she has into making a man love her when he has no intention of doing anything of the sort. He doesn’t even care, really, if she comes or goes. He just uses her for exercise, and he thinks, Why not? She is here, there is no gun to her head.’

‘But Dolly, I don’t understand – you say that people loved you, and you hurt them …’

‘But I always knew, darling, when a man had fallen for me and I didn’t feel the same. I always respected them enough to be honest. Anything less, in matters of the heart, is for the animals. A man who doesn’t respect a woman who loves him lacks the essence of a man. He isn’t a man. He’s a boy who never grew up. He shouldn’t be fucking he should be painting pictures, running in the school yard in shorts, modelling characters out of plasticine to fight with. And no more than that.’

I take a sharp involuntary gasp, and picture a vial of free grey paint stuck to a magazine.

‘Now, I should get on. You’ve kept me gassing and I shall get in trouble, Lulu.’ She gestures with her hands that I should get up.

I push myself to my feet and lift each leg, examining the soles of my feet that have already turned grey around the edges from the dirt on the floor.

Dolly looks at herself in the mirror today, tilting back her head. When she raises her hand to pull back the skin beneath her chin I see that she is suddenly trembling again.

‘You know I’ve always felt the envy around me, Lulu.
Some days you enjoy it, some days you want to run from it screaming. But what I wonder, often, now that it is gone, is how my life might have played out differently, if I hadn’t looked the way that I did. If I had been just a little bit less beautiful – it’s not as if it had anything to do with me, it was all luck, decided in the womb – but if I’d looked like my sisters perhaps. Where would I be now?’

‘Where are your sisters now?’ I ask.

‘Oh all dead Lulu’ she says quietly. ‘We always kept in touch with letters and cards, and they all stayed close to my mother’s house except me, but once mother died, we lost our focus, really. She was our scaffold. She was the thing we built our dreams on. We had a glorious time when we were young, she saw to that, I’ll tell you about it when we have the time. But you know, when she died, I didn’t know anything about it for three weeks. I didn’t get to go to the funeral. My sisters couldn’t track me down you see, I was off filming somewhere, cavorting with some leading man whose name escapes me now, and of course they couldn’t wait, so …’ she shakes her head slowly, and stares at herself in the mirror.

‘Why are you doing this play Dolly?’ I ask. I want to protect her, what if they savage her? What if the critics rip her apart? Or worse, what if she collapses under the pressure and runs away?

‘It seems like a lot of effort, you seem a little tired, and … have you got enough money? Did you need to say that you’d do it?’

I look in the mirror next to her and she stares, not at me, but at my reflection. Standing next to each other I wonder if anybody could think us related: she could be my grandmother, perhaps, or my crazy great aunt. We have the same nose at least. The same-shaped eyes. Of course hers are violet whereas mine are plain old Everton blue.