Material Girl

I turn and walk back towards the theatre. I feel a buzzing in my bag, and reach in for my phone. I am standing outside The Majestic’s back door when I answer. ‘Hello?’

‘It’s me,’ Ben says. ‘I popped back to get the post, in case they’d delivered my Xbox game. They hadn’t, but you have a letter … from some clinic.’

‘I’ll open it when I get home.’

‘Why have you gone to a clinic?’

‘Women’s stuff.’

‘Okay. I’ll see you later then.’

‘Ben – we have passion, right?’

‘Sorry?’

‘We have passion … in our lives …’

I sense him squirming at the end of the phone.

‘I don’t understand what you mean, I’m working …’

‘I have to go,’ I say, and hang up.

I stare at the cobbles beneath my feet. Snapping myself out of my trance I reach forwards for the handle of the theatre’s back door, but as I do I notice a piece of paper, a leaflet, is stuck to the bottom of my shoe where my heel has pierced it. I have been walking with it pinned to me all this time, like a cheap joke. I lean against the wall, trying to keep my balance as I lift my foot in the air, and snatch the leaflet off. It’s an underground map.

On the front, in big red letters, it says,

‘Don’t waste time.’

Scene II: Politics

You know those days just before Christmas when there are lights everywhere, in Highgate village or anywhere in London? I don’t mean the orange and red neon glory lights of Oxford Street or Regent Street, with their torrents of swarming shoppers below who fill every spare inch of pavement, as those lights, unlike puppies, are just for Christmas, and not for life. I am talking about the branches of white lights that string across the high streets of villages, dusting the everyday with Christmas sparkle, enough to remind you that it’s supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year. Some of those dotted lights even shine out from people’s windows, the optimistic ones. I think they should leave those lights up forever, for every day of the year. I’d like a life like that. Those strings of cheap diamonds are like a shared and hopeful smile. They punctuate the functional with magic, and increasingly that’s what I feel slipping away. My magic reserves are depleted, like dwindling natural resources, and they need a little topping up. I need a world with a little more magic.

Rain spits at the tips of my shoes sticking out in to the alley, as I loiter inside the backdoor of The Majestic, leaning against a grubby wall. I could call Ben back. My phone sits in my hand like a grenade. I always call him back. Ben can leave cross words for hours, for days. It’s like he wears blinkers or has tunnel vision. I know that men and women think differently but Ben is like a computer.

The Ben that I recognise now is his reflection in a monitor, on his PC screen: he is mostly otherwise engaged with technology. I check his phone constantly. I hate myself for doing it – I know it makes me a cliché. The act of rifling surreptitiously through his texts when he isn’t in the room, while nervously listening for the sound of his feet padding down the hallway to signal his return, epitomises the change from ‘old confident me’ to ‘fresh and pathetic me’ like an exclamation mark. But I have found texts from her. They always end with a kiss. I sat outside her office for an hour once, crying. She organises events for banks. Ben never fails to remind me, subtly or otherwise, that it was he and Katie that were hurt by their break-up, as if they are an exclusive club with a restricted membership of two.

Katie. I have to whisper it, like a swear word in a nursery. Apparently my feelings at the time paled in comparison to how badly they both felt, even given his constant emotional yo-yoing back and forth, from me to her to me to her. Ben doesn’t think it was painful for me, as I tried desperately to begin a proper and exclusive relationship with him, this man that I had fallen in love with, as he sat and cried for somebody else, and I hugged him to try to make it better. They are friends again now, but I’ll never be Katie’s ‘favourite person’ apparently. Ben finds it easier to blame me for the breakdown of his relationship rather than the two people who were actually in it, and in a way I let him. I do feel guilty about her. I feel like being obsessed with her gives me a reason to stay with Ben. Leaving him now would be like kicking her in the teeth again, this woman I’ve never met. A part of me believes that Ben would like me to leave, so that he can go back to her and settle back into his old-man chair in his old-man relationship and just call me a ‘phase’. He can pretend that he didn’t want anything else, just for a little while.

Ben ‘catches up’ with Katie once a month, either on the phone or in person. When I tried to say that I thought that once a month might be a little excessive, he told me I couldn’t tell him what to do. I tried to explain that I wasn’t telling him what to do, but rather letting him know how his actions made me feel, and he told me, with irritation in his voice and a hateful exhausted look on his face, that I had to get used to it because it was going to happen whether I liked it or not.

I think that Ben would prefer life to escape him rather than acknowledge that he is terrified of getting in touch with his emotions, but I don’t want that. Happiness isn’t fear. Fear leads to hate, and hate leads to the dark side … I know because Ben and his mate Iggy watch Star Wars constantly – the DVD Special Edition, the Director’s Cut Four Disc DVD, the Special Director’s Cut Ten Disc Super Edition. Cue Darth Vader heavy breathing. But I’m not ready for the dark side. I can still feel the force, even if Ben can’t. And I’ve always been afraid of the dark …

I suppose I should acknowledge that Ben thinks he’s just fine. ‘Men don’t talk,’ he says, like that’s reason enough for us not to sort things out, not to be happy.

I throw my phone into my bag in despair. My head is hot but the rain cools the air around me as I feel my face crack and crumble like an earthquake in a desert, my make-up disintegrating as I start to cry.

I startle myself with a short sharp laugh of surprise.

Then I cry again.

The prospect of leaving Ben makes me shake. I cannot contemplate being without him, of how scared I am of being alone no matter how cowardly it makes me feel … I desperately grab in my bag for my phone again, as if I am suddenly on a ten-second deadline and if I don’t speak to him before the timer runs out our relationship will explode. I find it and claw it open, and hit his number.

I just need to hear his voice. I need us to say important things that cement our feelings for each other somehow, so that I can get through the day. Ben and I don’t discuss marriage or kids, because I don’t want to put too much pressure on him. But, then, I am thirty-one now and I want those things, and maybe he does too. Lots of other people do, so why not us, and why am I so scared to say it? I don’t have to goad him into loving me and then, and only when he tells me he is ready, will we be allowed to admit that we want babies. I am not going to be scared to say that I want to have children anymore! Maybe if I just say it then he will too …

It rings five times before he answers and I immediately say, ‘Ben, it’s me.’

‘I’m working …’

‘I want to have children.’

‘Sorry?’

‘I want you to know that I want to have children.’

‘Right …’

‘And?’

‘And what? I’m working …’

‘I am telling you that I want to have children.’

‘Well, yes, I suppose you do …’

‘Well what do you think?’

‘About what?’

‘About having children?’

‘I think I want to have them too …’

He sounds like he is searching desperately for the right answer on some quiz show, like Blockbusters: ‘I’ll have whatever will make her stop talking please, Bob?’

‘Soon?’ I ask. ‘Do you want to have them soon?’

‘I … I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know. I haven’t really thought about it.’

‘Well … what do you think about?’

‘What? I’m working.’

‘Yes, but I’m thirty-one.’

‘Right …’

‘I think about things … about marriage … and stuff …’

‘Right …’

‘What do you think about those things?’

‘I … I don’t know … Scarlet, I’m working …’

‘Oh, okay, do you want to talk about it later?’

‘I … I don’t know … maybe … another time …’

I want to cry. Again. I realise we haven’t even had a conversation. Ben has just deflected me. I kick my words at him like weak volleys to his chest. He doesn’t even have to move off his spot. He doesn’t even have to stretch. He just stands there and bats me away with ‘maybes’ and ‘I don’t knows’ and I don’t even challenge him for anything more. A stronger woman would punch that ball back out of his hands, make him stand three feet from the penalty spot, then fire it at his testes. But I am not that woman … I thought that I was, but then I met Ben. If one person shuts down eventually the other one does too. I kick like a girl now.

‘Okay, I’ll see you later then,’ he says, finishing the conversation off.

‘You can’t wait to get off the phone, can you?’

‘No, it’s not that, but I’m working.’

I can hear his mates in the store laughing in the background. I can hear that they are watching Dude, Where’s My Car? again.

‘But … but what about … I just … Okay, fine. I’ll see you later.’

The phone line goes dead.

I don’t know who is more scared, me or Ben? It’s like Halloween round at our flat. But it’s the prospect of staying with him as our relationship rots beneath us that scares me the most.

And what if there is nobody else out there for me? Helen always tells me not to be ridiculous when I say that, but I worry that Ben and I just don’t try anymore, and what will make that any easier with somebody else? Maybe I am just creating problems, but I have a head full of questions. Maybe he’s having an affair? Maybe he doesn’t like sex? Or intimacy? Or anything that means you have to be close to another person? This is the man I want to marry, a man who won’t even give me a hug unless I ask for it and sometimes not even then. Will we even kiss at the altar?

Of course, the thought that constantly lingers is: Why did you leave your wife if you don’t love me? Did you start loving me and then stop? Are you seeing her again? I know they didn’t do ‘public displays of affection’, or ‘pda’s’ as Ben once described them. I thought expressions like that were the reserve of eight-year-old girls. At the time I wasn’t even talking about a passionate kiss, I was asking him for a peck on the lips on a half-full Virgin train. But Ben won’t do public displays of affection, not on a train, not now. The obvious question is of course, why?

But Ben won’t ask the ‘why’ questions either. He says ‘this is who I am’, even if he knows it won’t make him happy. As long as he can’t get upset, then he need never ask ‘Why?’

I don’t want that life. I want a deliberate passionate honest time.

It’s my mother’s fault for calling me Scarlet.

You can’t give a child that name and not expect her to live …

There is a loud cough – somebody is lurking awkwardly at the end of the corridor and has probably heard my entire conversation with Ben, and has certainly seen me standing here crying like some pathetic soap-opera wife.

He’s large, he looks fleshy and heavy like a saturated sponge.

I swipe at my tears.

‘Can I help?’ he asks.

‘I don’t know, maybe – do you think anybody has a relationship where the man comes up behind the woman while she is, say, washing up, and puts his arms around her waist, and whispers in her ear, “You look gorgeous even when you are washing up”? Does anybody have that? Even after three years? Or ever? Or is that just in films? Is that too much to ask? Because that’s what I want. Do I want too much? And also, to have somebody who says nice things to me, like, “You look really pretty tonight”, or “You really make me laugh”, or just something sometime that is spontaneous, you know? That makes me feel wanted, or valued at least. Do men do that, anywhere? Or is that just in romantic comedies? Also, I’d like to be hugged in the middle of the night, and sometimes even woken up to have sex. Does that sound strange to you? Because I know some men who just aren’t interested, at all. I know one man in particular who has explicitly been told that it is very much okay to wake me up in the middle of the night to have sex, and I won’t be annoyed, or tired, in fact I’d love it! I would love to have sex with him in the middle of the night! I have actually told him that he can do that. But he never wakes up! Not only that, he never even rolls over and hugs me! We sleep in the same bed, and he never even hugs me …’

‘Do you hug him? Do you wake him up?’ the saturated sponge asks me directly.

‘I used to. I gave up. It felt like I was in the persuading business. And who wants to feel like they are persuading somebody to hug them? It’s degrading …’

‘Does this man, is this, your husband?’

‘Boyfriend,’ I whisper, ashamed and mildly appalled to be having this conversation with somebody that I assume is a new colleague. But then Helen always says, ‘Scarlet, you’d ask advice from the speaking clock if it would answer you back.’ I suppose I am hoping that soon somebody, anybody, might tell me what I want to hear. Until then I’ll simply add to the weight of various strangers’ experiences that I am amassing in my head.

‘I think that …’ I see his thoughts flash across his wide face like a red line that signifies a heartbeat across a monitor. I see him actually thinking about what I’ve said in an effort to answer it, and not just recoiling at the emotion of it all. He and Ben would not be friends. Ben would probably accuse him of being gay. Of course he might be gay, but he seems too big … He starts to speak, then stops, then starts again.

‘I think that if I was in bed each night with a woman that I loved, I would want to hug her, and kiss her, and … certainly wake her up if she was offering what … has apparently … been offered. I would certainly do that. And if I loved her, of course I would want to hold her. Who else do you get to hold like that? Not your mum, or your friends. Who else can hug you like that? I mean, not all night, a man needs sleep, but certainly I would want to, and would hug her … Oh Christ …’

I am crying again.

‘What’s your name?’ I ask, regaining control and sweeping a finger beneath each of my eyes to mop up my tears.

‘Why?’

‘What do you mean why? I’m not undercover police …’

‘Gavin,’ he says, with a degree of suspicion.

‘Okay, Gavin, who maybe has drugs in his pocket or some outstanding parking tickets? Do you think I should break up with him and go speed-dating? Except my best friend Helen said her cousin went and she said the whole process made her feel like she was a human iPod. You just keep skipping past really good songs, thinking the next one might be better …’

Gavin looks a little bewildered. His cheeks are flushed, as if he has just climbed three flights of stairs, or necked two glasses of red wine in quick succession.

‘I’m the stage manager,’ Gavin says.

‘Okay … does that mean you aren’t allowed to answer questions about speed-dating?’

‘I don’t mean to upset you again … or more … but you can’t be in here if you are nothing to do with the theatre and … I’d rather take it up the arse from a seven-foot convict with the nickname Big Greased Shirley than go speed-dating.’

‘My God! You’d hate it that much? Do you think that’s a masculinity issue? That you don’t want to be judged by women? I mean, it could be okay … some people say it’s fun … speed-dating … not taking it up the arse … but some people say that’s fun too … I’ve never … I mean, I’ve thought about it, but … I’m not that kind of girl … except what is that kind of girl, really? A girl who likes sex? That’s fine, isn’t it, today? In this century? Like when men describe a woman as “dirty” but in a good way, I always thought that meant taking it up the … you know … but then I found out it just means that she’ll smile during sex … or not kick you off. But also, I am allowed to be in here. At least I think I am. Like I’d just be standing here crying if not? Of course I could be just watching the rain and crying over my rubbish relationship … except of course it’s not rubbish … that’s unfair … and I’m not that pathetic. At least I’m trying not to be … or maybe I am … but I’m Scarlet White, I’m Dolly Russell’s new make-up artist.’

I offer Gavin my hand to shake, thrusting my Evening Standard back under my other arm.

‘Scarlet White? In the dining room with the lead piping?’ Gavin shakes but doesn’t seem in any way stirred.

‘Hmmm, just the half a mile short of funny,’ I say, eyeing him with suspicion at the cheap and quick jibe.

‘Okay, well Dolly won’t be in for a couple of hours yet – she’s a late starter, the first wave of pills and gin don’t break on her beach until noon – but that’s good if you want to have a look around, and I can introduce you to some people, the rest of the crew – the director’s downstairs freaking out about the karma of the curtain … it’s too heavy apparently – he says it could bring us all down …’

Gavin’s delivery is so dry it’s as if he’s reading his lines from a sheet of paper. I wonder if I’ll ever know when he’s joking. I don’t know whether to laugh or not now. He must be my age. He is twice my weight and height. He has that slightly ginger but just brown hair that suggests Scottish ancestry to me, although that’s unfounded as I don’t know anybody Scottish and never have. Still, Gavin looks like he could wear a kilt and toss cabers on BBC1 on Sunday afternoons.

He ducks expertly as we weave our way along a maze of thin grey corridors, and somehow he manages not to bang his over-large head on a thousand dirty pipes hanging from the ceiling above us. The pipes are so close together that if he wasn’t ducking so swiftly he’d actually be banging out a tune. Part of me wishes he’d stop ducking because I want to know how it sounds, although Gavin would end up with concussion. I skip to keep up in my heels, my purple skirt swishing silk at my knees, my legs in fishnets flashing beneath. We are moving at speed, Gavin’s stride is long, and I start to feel a little sticky in my black cashmere cardigan that crosses directly over my heart. Neither Gavin nor I speak for what must be a whole minute; it’s a long, strange silence like the ones observed on the radio on VE Day or September 11th. I feel us trapped in a moving, uncomfortable bubble, thinking desperately of something to say while trying to catch my breath. A very short man appears around the corner in front of us. I mean, he is clinically short. Gavin acknowledges him with a nod of his head, and as I hug the wall to let him pass I glance down and see that he is completely bald on top.

‘Goodness, I didn’t even realise! I should have read the play beforehand, I know, but it was such a last-minute booking … normally I work on film sets, TV commercials … I haven’t done that much theatre, or any, really …’

‘Didn’t realise what?’ Gavin asks as we turn the corner.

‘That there were dwarves in the play. Is it a fantasy? Or science fiction? I didn’t realise Tennessee Williams wrote that sort of thing as well.’

Gavin stops abruptly and looks at me, and I screech to a halt a couple of steps later and turn to face him.

‘What?’ I ask.

‘He’s an electrician …’

‘Oh …’

I see Gavin shaking his head as he starts walking again and I run a little to keep up, my heels clicking on the cold concrete of the floor, my back sweaty under my cashmere, my top lip prickling under my make-up, my hairspray starting to scratch at my head. I don’t think I have ever been this mortified. Gavin isn’t talking to me. Maybe he and the dwarf are really good friends, although they’d look ridiculous walking down the street together. In my mind I can only picture the smaller guy sitting on one of Gavin’s massive shoulders, perhaps in a jaunty hat and eating an apple … but I know that’s wrong. I decide to break the silence with a change of subject, terrified of how Gavin might choose to introduce me to the rest of the crew, especially if there are any more … electricians.

‘So Gavin, pretend you have a girlfriend …’

He stops and glares at me again.

‘What?’ I ask.

‘I do have a girlfriend,’ he says.

‘Oh. I didn’t mean anything by it, Gavin … Okay, well, moving on, what if you and your girlfriend were just sitting on the sofa one night, watching the TV, and she said to you, “Say something nice to me”?’

‘Why?’ he says, and I can’t decide if he is just irritated, or if he already hates me like Greenpeace hate Shell. Either way I carry on regardless – I can’t make it any worse.

‘Because she’s just had a miserable day, her feet really hurt because she’s been breaking in new sandals, she’s had a row with her dad about the importance of correctly filling out cheque-book stubs, and she needs somebody to say something wonderful. She needs to feel special …’

‘I mean,’ Gavin says, pushing a door open then turning back to address me, ‘why haven’t I said something nice anyway?’

‘Oh …’ That’s floored me.

He steps back to allow me to walk through the door before he does.

‘Exactly,’ I say. Exactly. I think my voice might have just broken.

The stage is in front of us, and all of the house lights are up. It is smaller than I anticipated, and apologetic without a spotlight.

‘I’m not having this conversation if you are going to cry again.’ Gavin talks over his shoulder at me as we stride along the aisle. ‘Plus, do you talk about anything else? Have you tried cracking a few jokes? Or is it just constant relationship angst over a mound of self-help books and copies of Cosmopolitan? Because if that’s the case I don’t think I blame this guy …’

I blink twice in quick succession. I am startled and affronted. I can talk about other things; I talk about other things all the time!

‘I can talk about other things …’ I say, sneering at him.

‘Well thank God for that,’ Gavin says, and stops walking abruptly behind a short Indian man who stands with his back to us while gesticulating wildly, his hands conducting an imaginary opera. Nobody appears to be paying him much attention, and a clove cigarette flashes wildly between the stubby fingers of his left hand, sprinkling ash and sparks onto his chocolate-brown suede loafers. He wears a dark grey suit and a black polo-neck, and has very thick and very high dark hair that seems to have been set in one of those old-lady hairdresser’s, an hour under the machine with a Woman’s Weekly and a word search, sucking on a boiled sweet, all clicking teeth and concentration.

Young people in jeans and Sergeant Pepper and Mr Brightside T-shirts mill around in front of him paying him no mind, while every couple of seconds somebody completely new appears and carries a large plank of wood precariously from one side of the stage to the other. Everything that could possibly be covered in material has been – a dark-red brushed velvet with a grey and brown pattern of twisted leaves. The stage needs sweeping. It is insulated with a thin layer of dust, broken up by discarded McDonald’s wrappers. I count at least five Starbucks cups that have toppled onto their sides like the drunks on Tottenham Court Road.

Gavin says, ‘Tristan’, but the little man in front of us doesn’t turn around. He is shouting in a low, thick theatrical voice that he has shoplifted from the men’s floor of a 1950s department store.

‘But fucking love! I can’t fucking make it work! It’s obviously too dark! It’s too heavy and shameful and dirty and depressed – it’s an old velvet whore hanging from its whore’s bed – it’s been used, it’s on the cheap, it’s dragging all of us down with it to its old rotten-toothed whore old age …’ His shoulders droop, and the clove cigarette burns close to his fingers. He takes a violent last drag and stubs it out on the aisle. I hear him whisper, ‘Now I’m depressed.’