Material Girl

We made our way through five or six or ten bottles of South African wine – the cheap good stuff. We crammed noodles into our mouths and felt early spring warmth in the chilled night air. I started to think about wearing open-toed shoes. I sat with the assistant producer, a tiny girl with dark hair and eyes who was up for anything as long as it involved laughter, and the public schoolboy A&R, obviously trying too hard to be ‘street’ in oversized jeans and a Led Zeppelin T-shirt, but fun nonetheless. He referred to everything and everybody as adding value or not adding value. Thankfully I was informed that I added value, and I was almost tragically grateful.

Three German tourists sat on the corner of our table, laughing loudly at their own jokes – they too added value! It’s a strange phenomenon, this sharing of tables. It’s peculiarly un-London, to throw open your space and your conversation to any Tom, Dick or Harry who has money to pay and noodles to eat. It’s become remarkably popular, I think, because of its possibilities. Lunch is more fun when the opportunity to meet the love of your life is tossed into the pot as well.

The Germans had strong noses and red cheeks that looked like they’d blister in the sun. They were having a wonderful time too. We tried to engage them in conversation, but if their English was broken our German was destroyed – the public schoolboy could ask ‘How fast is your woman?’ but that was the extent of our European union. They left eventually, to be replaced by two Italian homosexuals who kissed in the corner. They were both very dark and fragile and beautiful and the assistant producer and I were hypnotised as they gently brushed each other’s lips. It was the easiest kiss I’d ever seen a man give, and it was to another man. In the end they asked me to stop staring at them. I tried to explain it was because I thought them beautiful, but they didn’t care for the reason.

We drank lots and ate little, and the night started to melt away. Then somebody mumbled, ‘Gerry’s?’

We stumbled across Soho to the bottom of Dean Street, and through the familiar little doorway. It was dark in there, it always is. You lose everybody you know as soon as you get in, they all drift away to talk to strangers. Perhaps that’s the appeal of the place – the promise of anonymity. I ordered something large and red and the man leaning next to me at the bar offered to pay for it. I said,

‘Uh oh, that’s trouble. I shouldn’t be accepting drinks from strange men.’

‘Then why have you?’ he asked.

‘Because I’m poor and drunk,’ I replied. ‘But then you already knew that.’

‘I guessed the drunk bit, I would never have known about the poor.’

‘How charming.’ My eyes focused. ‘You’re incredibly handsome,’ I said.

‘I’m an actor.’ He pinched his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger, as if appraising a painting in the Portrait Gallery, or a piece of broken china in a boot sale.

‘That makes sense. You may as well play to your strengths.’

‘Are you a model?’ he asked.

‘I am quite clearly five foot five. We both know that I am not a model.’

‘You could be a different kind of model, it doesn’t have to be catwalk.’

‘If you are asking me if I am a hand model, I find that offensive.’

‘Not at all. You could be a model of the more glamorous variety.’ He reached out and moved a strand of hair away from my eyes. I blinked him away.

‘You’re hoping I take my top off for a living?’

‘Maybe.’

‘I’m sorry to disappoint, but these puppies stay caged most days. I’m Make-up.’

‘Why don’t I ever get a Make-up like you? All mine are married with three kids.’

‘Your wife probably hires them,’ I said, without a smile.

‘I’m not married. Are you?’

‘Not yet. I have a “Ben”.’

‘And where is your “Ben” this evening?’

‘Playing Championship Manager with a warehouse assistant from Ealing Dixons.’

‘He sounds like fun.’

‘Yeah, well, you don’t know him. He has other qualities.’

‘Like what?’

‘You don’t care, so I’m not going to answer. Thanks for the drink.’

I walked off, proud of myself. The guy was on the make, I was obviously too drunk, and it showed but I still resisted. I didn’t want to meet anybody that night. It had become too frequent, too easy lately. A peck on the lips before home-time turning into a full-blown kiss, and I didn’t know who I was kissing and if I would ever see them again. It made me feel wretched. The first time that I kissed somebody else I didn’t realise it was happening until my lips were merged with his, and once I’d started, like eating a chocolate digestive at eleven a.m. on the first day of a new diet, it seemed pointless to stop. I’d start my fidelity again tomorrow. And the ‘being unfaithful’ part, in itself, was so unexceptional and run of the mill and ordinary that it just didn’t seem like that big a deal. He was an ad exec and we were drunk at eight p.m. on a shoot for the Carphone Warehouse, and we had stumbled into the wardrobe cupboard to find funny hats to wear. As I said, we were drunk. He kissed me, and I kissed him back, and the passion felt so unfamiliar it was akin to riding the rapids at Center Parcs, or jumping up and down on a bouncy castle – it didn’t seem bad, because I didn’t love him or care about him. It just seemed like a fun thing to do at the time, and nothing at all to do with Ben. It was three hours later that I experienced delayed shock, like whiplash, and I burst violently into tears.

That was it, I had cheated. I had spent all this time terrified that Ben would be unfaithful, and I had just let a cocky guy from Kent called Dave cop a feel of me through my blouse, and tell me that he loved it when I scratched my nails across his stomach under his shirt. It felt awful then, and awful the next time, four months later at three a.m. in the corner of a bar called Push on Dean Street, with a stuntman I’d met half an hour earlier. He had deliberately set himself alight only two hours previously.

That was just a kiss. Eight months later I went home with a guy called Jonathan who was the post-production supervisor on a short film I’d been working on. I consoled myself that at least I’d known him for three days when it happened. I’d called Ben the next day and told him I’d crashed at my brother’s because it was closer, and he hadn’t seemed bothered, he certainly hadn’t questioned me as I would have questioned him if he had stayed out all night. In a way I wish he had, and I’d been forced to admit it there and then. The lack of suitable grilling the next day just compounded the reasoning in my head for doing it: Ben didn’t care.

That night at Gerry’s, walking away from another possible indiscretion, I collapsed in a corner and chatted to an old bloke in a checked suit with a red nose and three strips of hair that sat on his crown like rashers of bacon. He was hammered on whiskey, but he managed to tell me that I bore a sharp resemblance to his first and favourite wife, only that I was fatter.

I noticed the handsome sleaze staring at me from the bar, trying to catch my eye. I ignored it, but eventually he was by my side again, putting another glass of red into my hand.

‘I can’t shrug you off tonight, can I?’

‘I’m Tom Harvey-Saint. And you are?’

‘Scarlet.’

‘That’s a very evocative name. Do you have a giant “A” on your chest?’

‘Not yet, no, but I’m working on it.’

‘You seem sad, Scarlet, and I’d like to help.’

‘I bet you would. Help me out of these wet clothes perhaps?’

‘Well that’s a very depressing way of looking at things. What could be so bad? Look at us, here, tonight, drunk in a glorious city full of beautiful people. What could be so wrong?’

‘That’s not enough for me. I need more than that. Five years ago that was enough, but not now. I need more than wine and London.’

‘Darling, don’t say you’re tired of London, you know what that means.’

‘Maybe I am, maybe I am tired of life. Of my life at least.’

‘Maybe you’re just drunk, darling, and feeling a little dramatic. Let’s not be pompous, it does nothing for you.’

‘I’m not being pompous … I just feel blue.’

‘But Scarlet can’t be blue! What can I do?’ He was stroking my thigh, running his fingers up and down my leg, his digits creeping towards places they shouldn’t. I wanted to shrug him off like a dirty shirt, but at the same time hug him like a five-day-old puppy.

‘Christ, I just want something beautiful to happen! And I want it to happen to me! Have I made that many wrong decisions? Are my expectations so disjointed from reality? Have I been that hateful that I don’t deserve to be happy?’

‘Fuck all that, darling, just live. Wake up. Just have fun. It’s every man for himself.’

‘No it’s not. It can’t be.’

‘Well what do you think the answer is?’

‘I think the answer is to find somebody who wants what you want. And who wants to be honest. And realises that’s a valuable commodity, if you find it. I need somebody to be my refuge …’

‘I completely agree. My name is Tom and I’ll be your air-raid shelter tonight.’

‘Oh you’ll agree with anything I say right now.’

‘Damn right. You have beautiful eyes.’

Tom Harvey-Saint took me by the hand and led me outside Gerry’s, into an alley between a pub and a walk-in health centre.

Tom Harvey-Saint had pecs like paving slabs. I had sex with him in that alley, by accident, in that I let him, I was drunk enough to allow lust to take over. It was violent sex, awful, savage; he thrust into me like a kitchen knife.

I crawled home to Ben that night in a cab, but slept on the sofa, in case he could sense it somehow, smell infidelity on my skin. I wish I had told him then, or that I could tell him now. Lies are so depressing.

‘Gerry’s? Are you a barmaid?’ he asks now.

I turn around. Tom Harvey-Saint leans in the doorway, ready for his close-up. He is as handsome as the last time I saw him. He is tall enough to dominate any room, and dark enough to catch any woman’s eye. He has wide grey eyes and a full bottom lip that looks like it’s just been bitten – it probably has been, for effect. His chest is like a barrel, and his stomach flattens under his belt like a snowboard. He is wearing a dark green short-sleeved polo shirt tucked into khakis. Both of his forearms rest on the doorframe on either side of his head. It looks like a casual pose, but I still can’t get out.

‘No, I’m not a barmaid. I’ve just seen you in Gerry’s.’

‘Good old Gerry’s. That must be it then. What are you doing here?’

‘Make-up. For Dolly. And you and Arabella as well apparently.’

‘Fantastic. I’ve never had a Make-up that looks as good as you. Mine are always married with three kids.’

‘So you’ve said.’ I nod my head at him, but he ignores it.

‘I do feel like I know you though …’ He stares at me and smiles.

I shrug, grit my teeth and hope he’ll leave.

‘Maybe I’ll see you later, then, at Gerry’s?’ he asks. He can’t use my name because of course he doesn’t know it.

‘Maybe.’

‘I’m Tom Harvey-Saint by the way,’ he adds, stretching out his hand to be shaken, knowing full well that I would recognise him from his appearances as Rob McKenzie on Death Watch – if I didn’t recognise him already, that is.

‘Scarlet.’ I rush out my answer, hoping he’ll forget it as quickly, and offer him my hand sharply. Instead of shaking it he grabs it, turns it over and kisses my palm, looking thoughtful for a second, flickers of recognition sparking behind his eyes. When I yank my hand back he seems alarmed.

‘Sorry, but I’ve just bleached my brushes and I don’t want you to inhale,’ I say.

I dart past him, making sure not to catch his eye, but the hairs on my arms silently stand up and scream as they graze the hairs on his. His neurons and my neurons or his atoms or my protons or something are diametrically apposed or aligned or whatever the science is that means my body lurches towards him dangerously. There is a dark pocket of something wild that hides deep inside of me that threatens my sanity when I am near a man like Tom Harvey-Saint. I practically run back to Dolly’s room. Shutting the door behind me I catch my breath. I hold my hands out in front of me and see what I already know, that they are shaking. I feel like he preyed on me, and yet I was compliant at the time. I think he realised that night that I was past the point of right and wrong or conscious decision-making, and that it was apparent that I didn’t know what I was doing, or who with. I just try not to think about it. The only person I have told is Helen. She called him all sorts of names, but I wondered, even then, if I was just making excuses for myself, for my actions. I did it. That’s that.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.