Material Girl (34 page)

‘I have more than enough money, Lulu. I am staying at
the Dorchester, I have a suite. I have my house in Santa Monica, and the villa in Stintino, both of them empty without me but I was always very wise with my money, because a woman should be with her own money. She should spend other people’s freely, but be careful with her own. But I divorced four times of course, yes, four. And I had the luck to marry some very rich men. Very rich men, Lulu. Of course not Charlie, he was a church mouse, but the rest were all independently wealthy. But it’s not the money that attracted me to them. Nothing should ever be about the money, if you can help it at all. It’s the passion. You can’t hide from it. Of course it’s an effort, at my old age, but I have never been one for fear. Sometimes a girl has to be brave, Lulu.’

Dolly brushes herself down and inspects herself one last time in the mirror. She tugs back the skin at the side of her eyes, and I get a glimpse of a smoother, younger version.

‘Thirty-five was my prime, Lulu. They say it’s your early twenties, but they are wrong. It has to be on the inside, and on the outside, to really knock their socks off. You have to wear it well. When I was thirty-five, Lulu, well. There wasn’t a head I couldn’t turn. I knocked everybody’s socks off then.’

As she walks towards the door I see her hands shaking at her sides and I want to grab her from behind and hug her and stop her going up there, to the stage, to be laughed at by Tom and Arabella, and manipulated by Tristan.

‘Did your daughter call?’ I ask as she opens the door.

‘No … she didn’t. But it’s the damned hotel, Lulu, I am sure of that. She is obviously trying and they just damn well muck it up. I shall speak to the manager this evening, if I am not too tired, and give him a piece of my mind.’

‘Do you miss her?’ I ask.

‘Who, Chloe? Oh, yes, I suppose I do. The older I get of course, and isn’t it always the way. We don’t talk that much to be honest, Lulu, she doesn’t have much to say to me. I
was never really anybody’s mother, never wanted to be, until now … It made me feel old. I just thought that I should have a child to try it, I suppose, like taking a drag on a joint that’s being passed around, you don’t want to miss out on something that everybody else is trying. But Chloe was living with her father and his new wife by the time that she was six, and I’d been on the valium for three years by then, so I don’t remember most of that. No, I was never much interested in mothering, but now I see that it must be quite something. To pass on the few lessons that life might have taught you …’

She is almost out of the door when she asks, ‘Do you speak to your mother much, Lulu?’

‘As often as I can.’

‘And do you love her?’

‘Oh, very much. Very much. I can’t really breathe if I think about her … not being around, when I need her. I can’t even think about it. She has always been there for me. Even when she left, she was still there.’

Dolly swallows loudly.

‘You should tell her that, Lulu. Pass me that water.’

I hand her the glass. It is water, because it is mine. I think I see surprise when it touches her lips and it isn’t the gin that she was expecting. She is used to her water with a little more kick these days.

But still, she takes a swig, then says, ‘Lulu, will you pop to the bathroom and get me a tissue, my nose is cold.’ She reaches up and grabs it for effect.

‘Of course,’ I say, even though she is halfway out of the door, and I have to push past her to get into the corridor.

I come back from the toilet and the door has been closed. Pushing it back open I catch Dolly chucking a bottle of gin hurriedly into her bag. Her cheeks flush, and her hands seem to shake even more.

‘It’s so damned warm in here, isn’t it? Are they trying to kill me? I have to stand on that stage and project with a throat red-raw from air-conditioning, for that ridiculous little man with his strange notions of nudity.’

‘Actually, you are getting a little hot on your upper lip.’ I reach for the powder.

‘For Christ’s sake, Lulu, just damned well leave me alone! Stop playing with me, can’t you see I’m old now, and ugly, and you smell like a brothel and you whine like a toddler – and you’re just making it worse!’

I take a step back, but she won’t meet my eye, and I run out of the room.

Coming out of the toilet that smells of fresh vomit, and with swollen eyes and mascara stained cheeks, I bump straight into Arabella in the hall.

‘Sorry,’ I say, and hate myself. Apologies and tears, I am pathetic after all.

‘So you’re the Make-up for Dolly?’ she asks. Her voice is cool and wealthy. She reeks of blue blood and horses and tea parties and pheasant shoots and all-girls’ schools and privilege. She wears her stupid mismatching clothes because she is too rich and too well-bred to care. I look like a tramp next to her, all mascara and fashion, trying too hard to please. Arabella has always pleased everybody immediately, or dismissed those she hasn’t with an arched eyebrow and a sneer. She looks at me now, like she could afford twenty of me.

‘Yes, I’m Make-up,’ I say.

‘Well I’m going to stick with Greta, I think it’s only right. She’s a lovely old girl, and I think it’s terrible that they’d even dream of replacing her.’

‘Fine with me,’ I say, sniffing.

‘Plus, you know, I don’t like my make-up too heavy.’

‘Oh fine,’ I say, and push past her, but she grabs my arm and spins me around.

‘Look, we both know how it is,’ she states in a measured tone.

‘What on earth?’ I glance down at her fingers digging into my arm.

‘With Gavin,’ she says, coolly.

‘With Gavin what?’

‘Oh come on. Look at you. Look at me. We both know that Gavin’s not really … permanent. If you want him, well, you can have him.’ She lets go of my arm and crosses both of hers. She eyes me up and down like the head prefect of an all-girl school, assessing a first year with the wrong shoes.

‘What do you mean, look at you, look at me?’ I shake my head in disbelief, I have never known anything like it.

‘Look, it’s Scarlet, isn’t it? We both get what we want. I mean men. I’m sure we go about it in different ways, but it’s not like we have to take whatever’s left over … I have my charms and you have yours. And Gavin is sweet, you know that, so if you want him, take him, I’m practically done with him anyway.’

I can’t believe what she is saying. I feel like an arctic wind just blew down the corridor and my features have frozen in disbelief.

‘I think, Arabella, that Gavin has feelings for you, and I don’t know what you are talking about with regard to me wanting him or not wanting him or whatever, and no, I don’t always get what I want, and this whole conversation is strange, and …’

‘No, he doesn’t have feelings for me,’ Arabella interrupts, ‘significant or otherwise. We both know that’s not true, Scarlet, let’s not lie, between girls. Gavin barely knows me. He knows what I look like, yes, but that’s about it. He doesn’t
know what I think about, I don’t know, religion, or politics, or Ethiopia.’

‘What do you think about Ethiopia?’ I ask.

‘Oh I don’t know, it was just an example. That they’re hungry, there’s a famine, etcetera, etcetera. You know what I’m driving at. He doesn’t care what I think any more than I care what he thinks.’

‘I don’t know why you’re saying this to me but I think you’ve got the wrong girl and …’ I start to walk away again.

‘Don’t play dumb, Scarlet,’ she says to my back, and I stop walking. ‘We’re both grown, adult women. We can tell it how it is.’

‘And, just for clarity, tell me, how is it?’ I don’t turn around to face her, speaking over my shoulder instead.

‘If you want him, have him. I’m done. That’s all I’m saying. I thought you’d appreciate my candour.’

She brushes past me, and I smell her flowery old-fashioned perfume as I stare after her. I remember to remember that it’s not just men who break hearts.

Gavin jogs heavily down the stairs at the end of the corridor holding a tin of paint. He is walking towards Arabella and I see him smile. She stops him and turns them both, like a pro, so that her audience, me, can see their profile as she kisses him hard on the mouth, and proclaims loudly, so the whole corridor, me, can hear, ‘Let’s have dinner later, Gavin darling.’

She saunters off up the stairs and Gavin watches her go, before turning around and walking back towards me with a half-smile.

‘Hi,’ I say.

His smile fades. ‘If you’re looking for Tom I just saw him upstairs,’ he announces, walking past me, ducking his head instinctively so he doesn’t hit a low pipe.

‘Will you stop that Gavin, please?’

He stops a few feet in front of me. His back blocks out the light from the bulb hanging ten feet away. He’s like a walking eclipse.

‘You were the one holding his hand,’ he says, swinging the tin of paint in his own hand.

‘Gavin, he was sleazing all over me, that’s all. I thought that we had cleared that up? And I would have thought that you, of all people, could grasp the kind of man he is. It was a complete misunderstanding. Please don’t keep going on about it. He was just singing really loudly, before, I was bound to look up.’

Gavin practically melts in front of me, and I feel a shudder down my spine, as though my feet are suddenly wet with the water of his feelings, and I should be raising my skirts and tiptoeing away. Ben always fights back, always accuses me of something, he never wants to believe me, but Gavin does. He turns around and I shudder again as a wave of unspoken feelings emits from Gavin to me. I realise that he hasn’t just been trying to make me feel better. He likes me more than he has been letting on.

‘Okay, I’m sorry, Scarlet, but Jesus, it’s this place! These people – they make you act weird. I’m really sorry.’

‘Honestly, Gavin, don’t think about it, don’t even worry about it, it’s fine.’ All of a sudden I want to run away. But I want to protect him too.

He smiles a big faux Scottish smile. ‘So are you going out to dinner with Arabella tonight?’ I ask. I can’t help myself.

He looks bashful for a moment, perhaps even guilty, but then he looks like a man again.

‘It sounds like it, and I always have to pay. I don’t mind but she orders champagne, and, you know, she earns ten times more than me.’

‘You’ll never get a beautiful girl to buy you dinner,’ I say.

He shrugs and smiles. ‘Well, I have to go and paint Tom’s
door dramatic red,’ he tells me evenly, the same old Gavin tone. He starts to walk off down the corridor.

‘Don’t go, Gavin!’ I shout.

He turns towards me and looks confused. ‘I’ll only be ten minutes, it’s just one door.’

‘I mean tonight, with Arabella, don’t go.’

‘Why not?’ He tries hard to look me in the eye, but then he looks away at the last second.

‘Because. Because! Because she can’t just click her fingers and have you jump. You’re bigger than that. No pun intended. But it shouldn’t matter how beautiful she is.’

Gavin smiles.

‘What?’ I say.

‘But it does. Look at her,’ he replies, like I should be impressed with him or something because of it, and it makes me mad.

‘Oh for Christ’s sake, Gavin, grow up! See past it. You’re not an animal! And it’s not impressive if she’s a horrible person, no matter how nice she is to look at!’ My cheeks are burning red with my outburst.

Gavin looks away, embarrassed, and so am I. I have gone too far.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

‘Do you want to have dinner with me instead?’ he asks quietly.

‘Me?’ I say feeling like I just threw myself down a hole.

‘You,’ he replies.

‘Oh. No. I can’t.’

Gavin bristles and goes red. ‘Right. Fine. I have to go.’

He turns and walks away.

‘No, seriously, Gavin, I have other plans and …’ I call after him. His stride is so long he is almost gone, but I can still see that the tops of his ears have turned red.

‘See you later!’ I shout after him, but he just keeps walking.
I slump back into Dolly’s room without knocking, but Dolly isn’t around. I am glad, I don’t want to apologise to her when it was her doing the shouting, but that is what I’ll be forced to do when she turns up, because she’s old, she’s talent, and she’s got an ego the size of Russia. I spot a piece of paper stuck in the centre of the mirror and I lean in to read it, my eyes reflected above it:

Lulu,

I get weary, sometimes, with the world, and with myself. You’ll see, one day, and then maybe you’ll remember and understand this stupid old woman, and forgive me. The world isn’t always warm, you see, like this dreadful room with its dreadful pipes, when we are in it
.

I’ve gone to find you biscuits
.

Dolly x

I tear the note off and put it in my purse.

The door opens and she is carrying a pack of digestives.

‘I had to steal them from the understudies, and they probably won’t eat for weeks now. Ha! But I think we need some sugar.’

‘Shouldn’t you be upstairs?’ I ask.

‘Yes, I should, and I’m going, but I wanted to give you these first, Lulu. Take them.’ She thrusts them at me clumsily