Material Girl. Louise Kean

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      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 СКАЧАТЬ