Material Girl

When nobody says anything, he takes a huge breath and demands of the room, ‘Has anybody got any uppers?’

‘Tristan?’ Gavin repeats, but louder this time.

Tristan spins around to face us. He is wearing oversized black plastic sunglasses reminiscent of Jackie Onassis, although they are clearly very cheap. His suit is well cut but still appears to be a size too big for him. So this is Tristan Mitra. He tilts his head down to look at us above his plastic glasses and something devilish twinkles in his eyes as he flashes me a huge wide charming smile. I’ve read about him in the Standard. It was the opening night of his debut play as a director, an all-male version of The Sound of Music at the Brixton Art House, and the press were trying to track him down for a quote because of its rave reviews. They found him in the Charing Cross police station on Agar Road. He’d been arrested for being drunk in charge of a wheelchair on Old Compton Street. He’d run over the feet of twelve sets of tourists, but unlucky thirteen had been a policeman. They found the owner of the wheelchair in a pub at the bottom of Wardour Street with a bottle of vodka and a beef pie. He said that Tristan had offered him two hundred quid for the chair, plus the vodka, and he had just really fancied a drink. But now he couldn’t get home.

Tristan has appeared in the gossip columns as well – he’s rumoured to be having an affair with Phillipe Ellender, the set designer, and I read a thing last week that said he might be having a thing with Dolly Russell herself, which seems utterly bizarre. When they asked him for a quote he said, ‘Loving somebody and not telling them can hurt more than being rejected by them. It’s like rejecting yourself.’ And even though he has a reputation for being able to drink all night, he recently came home so appallingly trashed that he flew into a jealous rage directed at his mother’s chinchilla, Charlton, and tried to microwave it … The RSPCA got involved at some point, that’s why it was in the paper.

‘Gavin! Love! Mountain of a man! Giant Gavin! Ho, ho, ho, green giant!’ he sings and does a strange little dance, ‘Giant Gavin! Love! … Are you on any prescription medication? You’re not on codeine, are you?’

‘No,’ Gavin replies flatly, and Tristan stares at him still, but his smile begins to fade.

‘I had morphine once,’ I say, to try and cheer up this strange little man, this large-voiced wide-eyed director of the stage, who is no more than five foot five.

His face explodes into a huge smile again and I can’t help but smile too.

‘Morphine! I’d fucking kill for some morphine now!’

He has the most English voice I have ever heard, a cross between James Bond and the Queen, it’s made of silk. When he says ‘morphine’ he exclaims it, like his own personal Eureka!

‘Gavin, love, giant, man mountain, bouncy castle, can we get any morphine? Is there a hospital nearby? Better yet, St John’s Ambulance Headquarters? They are easily fooled those St John’s guys, they don’t get that much action you see.’ He lowers his glasses and winks at me and I feel myself blushing. He notices it, stops, smiles and winks again. ‘So they’ll chuck anything at you given the chance. Last year I was at the Streatham fete with my mother – she was selling chutney – and frankly I was bored stupid, and I saw the St John’s Ambulance there and couldn’t believe my luck! I wandered over and just casually mentioned that I’d twisted my arm unpacking two boxes of Mum’s finest, and asked them to improvise me a splint and they bloody did it in seconds out of a bloody Daily Telegraph! It was fucking marvellous! It was splint poetry! Broken-bone poetry! It’s dark in here, isn’t it? I think it’s the bloody curtain …’

Tristan spins around to face the stage and it feels like the light has gone out. Next to me, Gavin sighs quietly.

‘Could it be the glasses?’ I ask.

‘No, love, no …’ Tristan turns back to face us, but doesn’t take them off. ‘I wear them all the time now. I got them free from some fucking teenage magazine –’ He lights another clove cigarette without offering either Gavin or I the pack, and inhales deeply. Blowing out a large smoke ring, he points through its centre at nothing with his finger. ‘– Jackie or Shirley or Tarty or something like that, some teenage slutty magazine. And it was one pound fifty at the newsagent’s! And these were stuck to the front of this magazine, like a bloody godsend! My eyes had been so red that month anyway, and above them it said something like, “How to know if the time is really right to let him touch you” … or “Give him your cherry but keep the box that it comes in” … or “Don’t let him lick you” … or something.’ He stops and counts something on his fingers and mutters quickly.

Gavin and I exchange a glance. Tristan is like a walking spotlight. I don’t want him to spin around again. I don’t think Gavin likes him as much as I do, but maybe he’s just too high up. I am five foot five, five foot eight in my heels today, and Tristan is at least three inches shorter than me. If we stood back to back in bare feet we’d probably be the same height, except his hair is really high.

‘And I just thought perfect!’ Tristan is talking again. ‘They ground me, but let me be me. They steal the me from me. They remind me that everything is filtered, through experience. You know not one person that comes to see this shit-shambles of a play will see it the same? We all see it through our life filters – who we’ve loved, who we’ve screwed, who’s screwed us. If they were the fucking one, or they just wanted to get their leg over and then they did it with your best mate one Wednesday night after football practice.’

Tristan stops talking and lowers his glasses again, fixing me with a stare. His pupils are almost black. I feel the colour rushing to my cheeks. I am caught in his tractor beam.

‘By the time you reach twenty you are emotionally shot to shit, and I’m thirty-six! That’s fucking awful, isn’t it? How the hell did that happen? But that’s the world. That’s life. That’s London. Non, regrette rien. We are all a little damaged –’ he pushes his sunglasses back up to cover his eyes, ‘– shop soiled with the juices of lovers old, just not broken, not quite broken. Do you have any uppers?’

‘No, sorry.’ I shake my head and feel really bad. I would love to be able to give him an upper right now – not that I think he needs it, but he just really seems to want one. We stand in a temporary silence, which I decide to smash.

‘Sometimes I say to Ben, that’s my boyfriend, I say, “Say something nice”, and he says, “I don’t do it to order”, and I say, “Okay, Ben, but you never fucking do it!”’

I hear Gavin sigh but I ignore it because I have Tristan’s full attention, as long as his eyes are open under his sunglasses.

‘“You never do it, Ben!”’ I carry on. ‘And I just think that if you are going to be with somebody it might be nice if they said nice things, to cheer you up, and let you know why they are with you – that it’s not just killing time, because they don’t love you and they don’t initiate sex so really there isn’t much point, but they aren’t ending it so …’

Tristan whips off his sunglasses and stares at me in alarm.

‘I want you to know that I haven’t taken these off for four days and that includes sleeping and a court appearance,’ he says, nodding his head at me to make his point, so I completely understand the gravity of his action. The whites of his eyes are riddled with red veins like worms inching around his massively dilated pupils.

‘Fucking hell,’ he says, shaking his head now. ‘Are you in an actual relationship? Do people still do that? We should definitely talk about that – I’m interested. Just not right now. But let’s definitely talk later. Who are you?’ He asks me with the accent on ‘are’, as if I may be an imposter, or an alien, or it might actually be important to somebody.

Gavin answers before I can. ‘New Make-up for Dolly.’

And I don’t sound that important after all. I’m not even the original. I’m a replacement, sloppy seconds – again.

‘Right, right, right, right.’ Tristan nods with each word, with complete understanding. ‘What happened to Old Make-up?’ he asks Gavin seriously.

‘She quit.’

‘But why?’ Tristan asks.

‘Dolly spiked her drink.’

Tristan’s eyebrows rise simultaneously and a smile tweaks the corners of his mouth.

‘With what?’

‘The doctor said it was probably speed.’

‘Lucky bitch,’ Tristan whispers and gazes off to one side, as if remembering some long-forgotten afternoon with a long-forgotten lover in a long-forgotten field, somewhere long forgotten. He turns back to Gavin.

‘Who’s Dolly’s dealer?’ he asks seriously.

‘I don’t know, Tristan,’ Gavin replies, with no more expression in his voice than if he were reading the Ikea instructions for a self-assembly three-drawer chest, but Tristan doesn’t seem to mind.

‘Right. Right. Right.’ He nods his head again, computing the information.

‘Make-up,’ he turns to me.

‘Yes?’

‘Who’s your dealer?’

‘I don’t … I don’t really have one …’

‘Right. Okay. Two things. Number one – watch your drinks. If you think she’s spiked it bring it to me and I’ll test it … Let’s go to Gerry’s later and we can talk properly then. You do go to Gerry’s, right? Next door to the Subway at the bottom of Dean Street? Fucking Subway, how did they get to be everywhere all of a sudden? But I do love their meat!’

Gerry’s is a bar in Soho that is open all night for people like me, and Tristan, and anybody really. People who need to carry on drinking for a little while after the curtain goes down.

‘Yep.’

‘Good.’ He nods and turns to leave.

‘What was the second thing?’ I ask before he goes.

He pivots on his heel and fixes me with another smile, sucking on the arm of his plastic glasses.

‘Are the pillows real?’ His eyes jump down to my chest and he moves his glance from one to the other as if a tennis match is being conducted across my cleavage.

‘They’re all mine,’ I say with a smile.

‘Good for you. Lady luck. No jogging, though, Make-up, it could be carnage. Gerry’s then. Gavin! I’ll be back in ten, I need to do a thing.’

He pushes on his glasses and walks towards the front of house, disappearing quickly through a set of swing doors.

Gavin and I stand in silence and watch him go. I feel exhausted. Something crashes loudly on the stage behind us.

‘Maybe he doesn’t want to hurt your feelings,’ Gavin says while still staring at the swing doors.

‘Tristan?’ The pillow talk could have offended less of a girl than me. I’m used to it, however, from Ben.

‘No, your bloke. This Ben.’

‘And just drifting on without any kind of emotional investment isn’t hurting my feelings?’ I ask, still staring at the swing doors myself.

‘I don’t see a gun to your head …’ Gavin turns to me as if breaking out of a trance. I snap myself out of it as well. I wonder whether Tristan has opium sewn into his suit. He has left us both dazed and a little cloudy.

‘But …’ I shake my head to clear it, ‘but I love him, Gavin … it’s so hard …’

‘Nothing is that hard really … look at the facts …’ He turns and walks towards the stage. I follow.

‘Okay,’ I count on my fingers, ‘he doesn’t say he loves me. He doesn’t want to have sex with me. He doesn’t say nice things to me, even when I ask him to …’

‘Has he ever said anything nice to you?’

‘He said I was “electrifying” once …’

‘Electrifying? What does that mean?’ Gavin looks nonplussed.

‘I know. Pretty much nothing. It made me sound like a waltzer at a fun fair …’

‘Or a broken hair-dryer,’ Gavin offers as we walk through a small door at the side of the stage.

‘Thanks, Gavin, thanks very much.’

‘Is he seventy-five? Or a miner?’ he asks.

‘No … He’s thirty-three and he runs a branch of Dixons … Are there any miners left? You know, after Thatcher?’

‘Not really. You should leave him.’ He says this with some certainty, and I wonder how he can be so sure.

‘But why doesn’t he leave me, Gavin, if he wants to? I love him! If he doesn’t want to be with me, why is he still with me?’

We reach a small door backstage that has been freshly painted lilac. A sign that reads ‘Do NOT disturb’ swings from the doorknob, as well as what looks like a lavender sachet, the type they sell at school fetes, that somebody’s granny made at her club. Gavin turns the knob as he says, ‘Because he’s weak.’

I feel hugely disloyal. I hate that Gavin has just said that. He doesn’t even know Ben. I have painted this picture, and it is obviously an awful one.

‘I don’t know, Gavin, I don’t think that’s fair. He’s come from a really hard place, he left his wife for me, and …’

I start to defend him, but Gavin fixes me with a stare, from way up high. Maybe that is it – he’s weak. I hadn’t thought of that.

‘Scarlet. He’s weak. Most men are.’

‘But I thought that men were supposed to be the strong ones?’ I say, quietly confused.

‘They are … This is it.’ Gavin shrugs at the little room and it feels like the room shrugs back.

‘We might need you to make-up some of the other leads. Our Cast Make-up, Greta, is about eighty. She’s always got a hipflask full of Drambuie on the go. We can’t let her do eyeliner. We haven’t got enough insurance.’

‘Fine.’ I dump my make-up box on a table covered in flowers and cards, in front of a long, thin, badly lit mirror. ‘As long as Dolly’s okay with me doing it I’m happy to.’

‘It’s cool, you could get here at midday every day and still have time to do the two other principals before she turns up.’

‘Anybody I know?’ I unclip the three locks on my carrier. It’s like a portable Fort Knox, but the prospect of it falling open on the tube and thousands of pounds’ worth of make-up tumbling out to be crushed under loafers and court shoes is unthinkable.

Gavin passes me a polystyrene cup of instant coffee that has appeared like magic. ‘Arabella Jones and Tom Harvey-Saint,’ he says as I take a sip.

I spit it back out all over Gavin’s huge trainers.

‘Didn’t realise he was in it, did you?’ Gavin smirks at me.

‘No … I didn’t realise he was in it.’ The blood rushes from my legs to my head and I lean back against the table urgently.

‘Fancy him, do you?’ Gavin asks, but as if he is reading court notes back to a jury.

I gulp but don’t answer.

‘Watch out Ben,’ he whistles, and edges towards the door.

The side of the room that isn’t the table and mirror and flowers and cards is cushions and more flowers, a large gold chair with deep red velvet backing, and a tall lamp with a fuchsia scarf thrown over it to soften the light. It’s a tiny space crammed with decoration, an old room dressed up to the nines.

A noisy fan blows hot air out in the corner, but it seems fairly warm anyway.

‘Do we really need that?’ I ask Gavin, nodding at the heater.

‘Yep. The pipes are rubbish and she likes it to be twenty-four degrees.’

‘The lighting in here is terrible,’ I say, spinning around, trying to find another plug socket.

‘She won’t have it any brighter either, and when you meet her you’ll see why,’ he says. ‘Do you need anything before I go?’

‘Where’s the kitchen?’

‘Down the hall, second turn on the left.’

‘Where’s the bathroom?’

‘Hers is opposite, you can use that if you’re discreet. Anything else?’

I rack my brain, trying to stumble across the gaps in my knowledge, all the necessary pieces of information that could be missing. Theatre is new to me, it’s not my thing. I do shoots. I do hanging around all day eating crap from a van and dabbing sweat off actors or singers with a puff pad. I do wine at lunch on set and pretty much all afternoon. I do big airy warehouse spaces, not strange little rooms with scarves thrown over lamps and bad heating.

‘Is Tristan crazy?’ I ask finally, as it seems to be the most pertinent question I can ask. ‘I mean, previews are supposed to start next week, aren’t they? That’s why they got me in and didn’t wait for someone with theatre experience, my agency said. But it kind of … doesn’t seem ready?’

Gavin smiles and the room feels warmer. He coughs, looks away, and then back at me. It is a theatrical move. Maybe you can’t help it if you work in this environment, maybe these strange dramatic pauses and looks and asides are contagious? Maybe everybody here is crazy.

‘Is Tristan crazy?’ he repeats. ‘No more than any of the rest of them. He likes the sound of his own voice. And he can be very charming, for a short bloke from Streatham with a pill habit. But you’ll get used to it. He calls everybody “love” so he doesn’t have to remember names. It’s actually quite clever. But you’re okay, you’ll be Make-up.’

‘Isn’t it funny, I mean funny strange – maybe funny tragic for me – that one man can be so easy with it, and another so mean?’ I sip my coffee and lean back on the counter.

‘With what?’ he asks, half of him out of the door, but still loads of him in the room.

‘The L word. Love. Ben won’t say it. Tristan can’t stop. So is he gay?’

Gavin takes a step back into the room and pushes the door ajar behind him. ‘No, not gay. I’m sure he’ll tell you. He told me three days after I met him and it took him a while to warm to me, he said because of the height thing. It’s … Tristan is a non-libidinist. That’s his phrase, not mine. It means he doesn’t think about sex. Or care about sex. He doesn’t want sex.’ Gavin’s eyes widen like spaceships in his face, illuminated and strange and high up in the sky.

I stop myself taking another sip of coffee, and angle my neck to look up at him and make sure he isn’t joking. But he nods his head and doesn’t even smirk.

‘He doesn’t care about sex?’ I ask.

‘Nope.’

‘And he doesn’t think about sex?’

‘Nope.’

‘But men are supposed to think about sex every seven seconds or seven minutes or something, aren’t they?’

Gavin coughs, embarrassed. We’ve spent at least half an hour together this morning … reckoning on those figures Gavin has felt fruity and not admitted it a few times already.

‘Christ, that’s the statistic that keeps me awake at night when Ben doesn’t want to … you know … But Tristan doesn’t even think about it? How does that work? How do you stop yourself? That would be fantastic!’

‘You think? Christ, I think it would be awful.’

‘But Gavin, I mean, if it didn’t even bother you, if you didn’t even think about it, life would be so much easier. If I didn’t miss sex so much there would be far fewer problems in my relationship.’

‘It’s not fantastic, it’s weird. And so is your bloke by the sounds of it, so don’t go thinking that not thinking about sex is an answer to anything. Sex is the thing that keeps most of us going!’

‘Shouldn’t that be love, Gavin?’

‘I’ll take sex over love most days. It doesn’t hurt half as much, under normal circumstances at least!’

I grimace at Gavin, but he just winks and I blush. It’s not him, I blush if anybody winks at me. I find it intimate and peculiar and sexual. I’d blush if my own grandmother winked at me, and then of course I’d throw up.

‘So Tristan doesn’t have sex, ever?’

‘Oh no, that’s not true, I think he has it quite a bit. It’s just not about him. He doesn’t care if he gets it or not. I think he does it for other people …’

‘But – I’m sorry, Gavin, for all these questions – but how does he get … you know … aroused? If he doesn’t want it, or care about it?’

‘My guess is Viagra. Any more questions?’ Gavin pulls the door open again with one of his huge hands. He could be a one-man circus, with a few lights around his torso, offering rides on his palms for fifty pence or a pound. I’m sure I could sit in one of those hands.

‘Gavin, what’s your girlfriend like?’

‘What’s she like?’

‘Is she freakishly tall too?’ I smile at him and I see a smile form in his eyes in return. The big Gavin smiles must be rationed, like chocolate in the war.

‘Not freakishly tall, but not short like you either.’

‘I am not short, I am five foot five, which is two inches above average. Is she pretty?’

‘Why all the questions about my girlfriend?’

‘I’m just interested, Gavin. Other people’s relationships interest me. I just wonder what you go for, what your type is. Everybody has a type. Some men just go for baubles, decoration. The only thing more attractive to a man than a beautiful woman is an easy life. And I just wondered what your type is. Beautiful or easy?’

Gavin looks at me with an element of serious concern. I don’t think he likes this line of questioning. But he answers anyway.

‘Arabella? She is very beautiful. And not at all easy. So there’s your answer I guess.’

‘Arabella from the play? But Gavin, she’s stunning!’

‘And?’ he asks me, like a dry old maths teacher waiting for an answer from a stupid young pupil.

‘And nothing, nothing at all. That wasn’t surprise, I just meant … good for you!’

Gavin lowers his head and inspects the coffee I spat out onto his trainers, which is drying into a dirty stain that looks a bit like the birthmark on Gorbachev’s forehead.

‘We’ll see,’ he says, half out of the door now. ‘She is gorgeous. But she’s definitely not easy, and it can wear you down.’

‘Not easy is the best kind!’ I say, as he is almost gone, but I hear him mutter ‘Tell that to your boyfriend,’ just as the walkie-talkie on his belt starts spewing white noise and static, and I hear a muffled voice say,

‘Dolly’s at the back door.’

My door opens again and Gavin pokes his head back in. ‘Dolly’s arrived,’ he says, and turns to leave.

‘Should I wait here?’ I shout, a hint of panic in my voice.

‘Depends on her mood. She might throw you out, she might want to meet you straight away. You may as well stay, I suppose. I’ll try and gauge how she is before she gets down here.’

‘Should I be scared?’ I ask him.

‘I don’t know, are you scared of most things?’

‘It’s starting to feel that way.’

‘Well if you are she’ll sense it, like an attack dog, so try and keep it under control. And don’t worry, with any luck she’ll be hammered.’

Gavin shuts the door.

I unpack and inspect my brushes to see if any of them need replacing, and open up a couple of samples that a new make-up company have sent me. I check my own hair in the mirror and mess it up a little, and re-gloss. The trouble with talking is that it wears your gloss away. I think about sitting, but I don’t know where Dolly will want to sit, and I don’t want her to burst in and chuck me straight back out again for nabbing her favourite spot. I try to lean back nonchalantly, cross my arms, uncross them, strike a relaxed non-fearful pose that doesn’t just look ill at ease and terrified.

I spot a press pack sitting on the desk, and a picture of Tristan sticks out. Somebody has childishly drawn long eyelashes on him, and a pencil-thin moustache. Below the picture the text reads:

Directed by Tristan Mitra, Tennessee Williams’s The Milk Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore has been staged at The Majestic once before, starring Hollywood screen idol Joanna Till. The play marks Tristan’s debut in the West End, fresh from the success of his all-male adaptation of The Sound of Music at the Brixton Art House. He previously worked for the DSS for thirteen years, but was fired, which he believes intrinsic to his direction of the play.

I pick up another page and see a heavily air-brushed close-up of Dolly. You can tell it’s air-brushed because no matter how good the make-up there would still be the suggestion of lines around her eyes and lips, but her face is like a porcelain mask instead. I skim-read text. It mentions Laurence Olivier and David Niven, but then nothing of note for two decades, until recently when it seems she’s been in some TV movies, playing ‘the popular grandmother detective Mrs Mounting for the Hallmark Channel series Mrs Mounting Investigates.’ From David Niven to the Hallmark Channel then. I toss the pack back onto the counter, sit on my hands to stop them from shaking, and wait for Dolly Russell to make her grand entrance.