I don't actually want this particular picture of red shoes, although they are similar to a pair I actually own. I was trying to find on the website http://www.spaininfo.co.uk/ a picture I had on their printed brochure of a girl in a red dress trying to choose from a dozen boxes of red shoes - a tribute to shopping in Spain that did not seem to be on the website. Not that I doubt the Spanish shops, just that a trip to Lisbon via Madrid on a tight budget en famille 5 years ago did not allow me to find out, and that is the only time I have been in Spain.Although as my current escape dreams are full of solitary travelling lately, I have been toying with the idea of flying to the Algarve (cheap) and using a rental car or the local buses to travel around Southern Spain. I have a vain hope that in mid-winter the reputation of Alhambra as tourist ridden may prove unjustified.
However I digress from shoes. I already own 2 pairs of fancy red shoes and acquired 2 more pairs of be-jewelled party shoes in the sales. 1. a wonderful beige velvet with open toe and jewels and 2. a more strident purple silk with diamante stars, both now squirreled away in my fancy clothes suitcase and away from the accountant's gaze (aka known as my husband). The cost was low, about £40 for the two. The pleasure and the guilt strange (due in part to my huge credit card hangover - even at 0%). So what was the attraction of choosing red shoes? After all I rarely wear them. It was the idea of family, fantasy, generations and shoes.
Black shoes
My oldest daughter was home last weekend for the large Catholic funeral of the father of a school friend who had been in Australia for exactly four days when the call came to say he had died of a heart attack on a French golf course. His wife, owner of a recently acquired post-graduate certificate as a theatre nurse was in pieces in grief. As was my daughter's friend. Fine art graduate and lover of fashion as my daughter is, she set out for the funeral from the bus-stop outside our house in London fashion black layered coat,leggings, scarf and dress, and had a lift down to Newmarket within a minute, probably on account of her wooden style high heeled black shoes. She had the sense to take the other woman at the bus stop with her, although the male driver was almost certainly a neighbour - we all know the vagaries of our local buses, so seldom seen on time, not to gallantly give those waiting at the bus stop a lift whenever we can. She returned some hours later in a black patent pair with high heels and jaunty brass gold buckles, as 1980s a pair of shoes as I have seen in a while. She claimed that the discomfort of the other shoes had led her into New Look to find them for only £15. As she left early the next morning with her father and one of our larger suitcases for her flight to Whistler later that night, I discovered she had left the new shoes for me to find. Clearly unsuitable for her ski holiday ! And a generous gift from a girl, taller, thinner, blonder and half a shoe size larger than me. But they fit !!! I feel like a queen. Why was it such a lovely gift, shoes only worn to one funeral ? And why was I, sober matron that I should be, so cheered by a pair of jaunty buckles and a high heel ? If I desire the shoes, will some one desire me? I know a nice footman who might! Is shallow female desire so materialistic and body personalised?? She who would normally read a book instead? Madame Bovary was never more satisfied with fashion over thought. Does my daughter know how I think myself young these days.
I return today revitalised and anxious to go back to my academic writing and thinking. And ignoring the very sick feeling in my stomach at the thought of disappointing the accountant who wants me to stop. Incompatibility after 30 years stalks our household. I am very afraid. But too afraid to talk. Because he cannot argue in terms of Virginia Woolf.
This Mrs Dalloway is metamorphosing. I am very afraid of becoming Madalena.
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