Material Girl. Louise Kean

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ that I believed him when he said it was a mistake. She meant to send it to somebody else, he said. It didn’t actually have his name in it, so I believed him. But I shook and cried for fifteen minutes.’

      ‘So you don’t trust him at all?’

      Tristan watches himself as he thrusts out his Adam’s apple, and his crotch as well, as he talks. He juts out those parts of him that make him a man, but then counters it with a strange swish of his hand, or lightness of touch. It all seems very deliberate, experimental. He is trying to find the moves that work.

      ‘I would trust him, if he could just articulate how he felt, sometimes, about me, but he never does. I feel terrible for not trusting him sometimes. I don’t know what goes on in his head.’

      ‘Nor he yours, I’m guessing. And don’t feel terrible yet, you might be right! But he told you once? I mean, you fell for him once?’

      ‘He started, but then he stopped. He kind of drew me in, then closed the door. But it’s as if I’m halfway through …’

      ‘Your leg is caught in his door?’

      ‘Something like that, I suppose.’ I laugh sharply.

      ‘Ha! And you don’t know whether it will hurt more to try and push the door open, or tear your leg back out!’ Tristan folds and unfolds the cuffs on his polo-neck jumper.

      ‘Well …’ He takes a deep breath and finally looks away from the mirror,

      ‘I need to think about this one some more. The only thing I can offer, from my twisted perspective, love, is that what makes a woman of forty more attractive than a girl of eighteen is not her body but her confidence. Don’t fold, Make-up. Don’t dither. Toughen up. Let’s have some fun.’

      ‘I’m thirty-one. I’m not forty,’ I say, as I feel stupid tears rush to my eyes.

      ‘I didn’t say that you were, Make-up. Now, how do you feel about nudity?’

      ‘I’m sorry?’

      ‘Nudity, how do you feel about it, and in particular cast session nudity?’

      ‘Uncomfortable pretty much sums it up.’

      ‘But what if it were just me? You see, I’ve been body-brushing with a toothbrush recently, rather than following any traditional bathing ritual, and I wonder if it doesn’t give me a shine that I’d like to share. I’ve been reading a lot about Major General Charles Orde Wingate, heard of him?’

      ‘Well, Tristan, I can’t say that I have …’ The tears recede and I can’t help but smile.

      ‘Churchill described him as a man of genius, who might have become a man of destiny. But he died, in a burning crash of a plane, in Burma. 1944.’

      ‘Okay … and he used to conduct sessions in the nude?’

      ‘Hmm? Yes, yes, he did. Of course his were with soldiers, but I think there might be something in it. Strip away our pretensions, make us real, cut to the chase. Beauty is truth after all. If we were all a little nude, once a day, the world would be a much less violent place. I know it’s a fucking cliché but I believe it. Of course there is always the danger that somebody is going to become unspeakably aroused, but that doesn’t really affect me … Do you know he inflicted some terrible defeats on his enemies, on the invincible Japanese! And he believed the best way to survive tropical heat was a diet of raw onions.’

      ‘Have you tried that as well?’

      ‘Yes, I tried. It gets tropical in Streatham in August. But it gave me terrible flatulence. I was like a human wind machine, and the stench! It is impossible to function when you are terrified to be in small spaces, afraid of what your own body might inflict upon those around you … I couldn’t be in here, right now, with you, if I were still doing it. Of course sometimes it was wonderfully amusing, it depended on the company. In lifts, hilarious! Inevitably it was my mother that made me stop. She’s a wonderful woman but with little tolerance for anything other than her own peculiar rituals. It’s nothing to do with her legs, she’s just that way.’

      ‘Her legs?’ I ask.

      ‘They barely work any more,’ he replies, nodding.

      I remember reading in the Standard that he lives with his mother in Streatham, and that she is disabled, but I can’t remember how it happened.

      ‘Why don’t they work?’ I ask, trying my best to seem sincere and not just nosey.

      ‘She has a tumour, Make-up, that is pressing down on her spinal cord, and is hard for them to reach without risking complete paralysis. She says that she is lucky, of course, that it has only affected the lower half of her body, but that’s bullshit. She’s a religious woman, and I thank God that she is, even though of course I don’t believe in it at all.’

      I want to say, ‘But you’ve just thanked God’, but decide that now isn’t the time.

      ‘So she fell over one day and never got up. Dad’s dead, so that’s that. She’s going nowhere, and she cooks a wonderful lamb curry, and …’ He nods his head quietly, and squeezes his eyes shut.

      I don’t know what else to say, so I change the subject. ‘Do you think Dolly might be here soon, Tristan?’

      He presses the balls of his palms into the sockets of his eyes. ‘I fucking hope so, love, otherwise we’ll never open!’ he shouts, and whips away his hands to clap loudly, spinning in a full circle and biting his lower lip with his teeth, thrusting his groin back and forth like a 1970s porn star, like some second-rate Russ Meyer gyrating horror.

      ‘Are you okay then?’ he asks me.

      ‘Yes, but I think I need biscuits.’

      ‘Kitchen’s down the hall, didn’t bouncy Gavin show you?’

      ‘He told me, I’ll find it, it’s fine.’

      ‘Lovely Gavin, I have to remind myself that he’s not, you know, slow … simple, retarded, him being so big. But he’s sharp as a tack really. Acid-tongued. I like it. It keeps me on my toes.’

      ‘Okay, well I’m going to go and find those biscuits I think.’

      ‘Good for you, but just the one, mind! Keep your chin up, Make-up. Stop thinking about your bloke if you can. We aren’t worth it!’ He throws me a huge grin – he doesn’t believe that for a second.

      ‘I’ll try,’ I say, and edge past him to leave. He trots off in the other direction, singing what sounds like ‘Anything Goes’ segued into ‘Let’s Get It On’.

      

      I edge down a grey hallway, in and out of the patches of dirty light cast by infrequent and dim bulbs, speeding up through the strange shadowy spots that make me nervous with Tristan’s talk of shootings and blood-spattered walls. My heels clicking on the hard cold floor announce me to any potential murderers or psychopaths or evil spirits lurking behind dark doorways: they’ll hear me coming and be fully prepared to leap out and grab me, pull me into the darkness with them, smother my face and paw me to near death. I am convinced that’s what will happen. I make this daily exhibition СКАЧАТЬ