Under the Duvet Read online

  Unusually for me, I had no other boots about my person. I always bring too much stuff. Even when I go out to buy a pint of milk I overpack. But on this trip, for some insane reason I’d decided to downsize, travel light, rationalize, as it were. And look at where it had got me.

  ‘Can’t you get a pair in New Zealand?’ Himself enquired. But I’d seen a copy of my New Zealand schedule and I had five and a half minutes to myself on the third day and that seemed to be the extent of my time off. No time for buying boots.

  ‘Can’t you buy a pair in Australia before you get to New Zealand?’ he suggested.

  ‘I wouldn’t say they sell boots in Australia,’ I said doubtfully, thinking of Home and Away and Picnic at Hanging Rock. I was sure I’d never seen any boots in them. ‘Flip-flops, maybe, but I can’t imagine them having four-inch-heeled boots.’

  Himself mournfully agreed.

  But when I opened my case in the hotel, he gestured excitedly at my snakeskin sandals, turquoise suede wedges and silver-speckled jellies. ‘But you’ve loads of shoes,’ he bellowed joyfully. I shook my head sadly. Men just don’t get it, do they? They’re definitely missing the shoe chromosome.

  Just as we thought all was lost, I narrowed my eyes thoughtfully, stared into the middle distance and breathed, ‘I’ve an idea. It’s a long shot but it just might work.’

  Operation Early Start involved me getting up at the crack of dawn. Before the shops even opened I was in Oxford Street, hoping to buy a new pair of boots and still get to the literary lunch.

  I made straight for my favourite shoe shop and hung around outside waiting for it to open, as a methadone addict would outside a chemist’s. To my relief there was already an employee in the locked shop. With anguished face and frantic hand gestures I conveyed to the girl within that time was short and the situation was desperate. With stony face and short, sharp gestures with her first and middle fingers she conveyed to me that she didn’t start work until nine-thirty and didn’t give a damn how desperate my situation was. Coldly, she turned back to her styrofoam cup of coffee and her apricot danish. ‘May it choke you,’ I muttered, for a moment thinking I was my mother.

  At nine-thirty-one I was in, surveying the wares with a gimlet eye. I found I was looking for a pair as close as possible to my banjaxed ones – despite the way they’d let me down. I am clearly a creature of habit.

  But nothing doing. When you’ve ridiculously small feet like mine, it’s well nigh impossible to get a pair of shoes to fit. (As a result I am queen of the insole.) From what I can gather, they get one pair of size thirty-six shoes in London every season. Shop after shop tried to fob me off with boots two sizes too big for me and it was gone twelve before I struck gold and was able to say those magic words, ‘Don’t pack them, I’ll ride them home!’

  Within seconds I was in a taxi, heading for the literary lunch. I hadn’t been published for long in Britain, it was the first event of this kind I’d been invited to and I was nervous and excited. Good job I had well-dressed feet for it! I stretched my legs out in front of me, all the better to admire the new boots. I turned them to the left and smiled fondly at them. I turned them to the right… and the smile faded. Was there some kind of brownish sheen on one of my lovely new black boots? I gave my foot another twist to see it in a different light. With cold horror it dawned on me. How could I have missed it? They were two different colours. One a nice, desirable black, the other a nasty, interloper brown.

  As soon as I was aware of it, I couldn’t imagine how I’d ever missed it. The brown boot glowed with a malign, brown evilness. The black one shimmered with a kind of apologetic, gentle blackness. It was too late to return to the shop, I had to go to the lunch with one black boot and one brown boot. I was doomed.

  And I was. The pre-lunch drinks reception was a nightmare. Sporting my name badge, sweating neediness, wearing a desperate please-speak-to-me smile, I’d never been more ignored in my entire life. All because of the brown boot. Mind you, I was ignored by the very best! Nick Hornby shook my hand then quickly turned away. Roddy Doyle stared at me then also turned away – not that I blamed him! The empty space around me grew and grew: I seemed to recede from the room. Everyone else was knee-deep in conversation, laughing their heads off, while alone and on the margins, I fancied that my brown boot was neon and ten times its normal size. It was the longest hour I ever endured.

  At least when we sat down for lunch I was able to hide my shame beneath the table. And redemption flickered momentarily as I thought of wearing the new black one with the old unbroken one. But no. Of course not. That would have been too much to hope for, wouldn’t it? The brown boot and the broken boot were both left-foot ones.

  So I had no choice. I went to New Zealand with one black boot and one brown one.

  First published in Irish Tatler, October 1997.

  MIND, BODY, SPIRIT… AND SHOES

  Imeldas, and How to Spot Them

  I remember the first time I fell in love. I was fifteen years old and in a department store. Suddenly the breath was knocked from my body, as my eyes fixed on the object of my desire – a pair of four-inch, black-patent platform wedges with an ankle strap.

  I wanted them desperately. I felt they’d change me into someone sophisticated and beautiful and make me completely irresistible to Eddie Jackson. But by the time I’d saved up my babysitting money, the shoes were long gone and Eddie Jackson was sporting several hickies that had Karen Baker’s teeth marks on them.

  Then, to my surprise, I became obsessed by a pair of navy clogs and I learnt a valuable lesson. Men will come and men will go, but there will always be shoes.

  In the same way that men are either leg-men, breast-men or I’ll-take-what-I’m given men, women are divided into shoe women, bath-products women or nice-underwear women. I’m definitely a shoe woman. Or an Imelda, as we like to call ourselves.

  I used to think I was the only one. I lined the floor of my wardrobe with five-inch-heeled gold stilettos, eau-de-nil embroidered leather sandals and flowery Dr Martens and thought I was the only person who had ever slept with their new pair of green nubuck clogs.

  Until a new girl started at work, wearing ox-blood pumps with back-to-front heels. ‘I love shoes,’ she admitted. ‘All my friends call me Imelda. After Imelda Marcos.’

  I was really upset. I had thought I was Imelda. But it transpired that there are lots of us out there and it’s better to befriend each other. We’re like collectors of rare artefacts. Only an Imelda would murmur, ‘I’ve got a pair of rather special cone-heeled ankle boots that I think you might find interesting.’ And only another Imelda wouldn’t think she was a total nutter.

  If they can’t get shoes in the right size, Imeldas will still buy them, if they’re sufficiently fabulous. Because there are remedies. Too big? Hey, that’s why God invented insoles! Too small? What’s a small piece of excruciating agony when your feet are well dressed?

  Imeldas pamper their footwear as if they were loyal pets, buying them little titbits, like colour-protect and rain-guard and all the rest of the crap they try to flog you every time you buy shoes. I’ve got tons of those plastic things you stick in shoes to help them keep their shape. And I’ve spent at least three years of my life holding suede boots over boiling kettles, in a labour of love.

  Although recently I met an Imelda who keeps her shoes in their original boxes, and I don’t know about you, but I think that’s going too far.

  Unlike other garments, shoes don’t suddenly become too tight one week out of every four. Shoes will still fit you snugly even if you haven’t got to the gym for over three weeks and you’ve been having curries and pizzas every night. You see, shoes deserve your loyalty because they return it.

  How to know if you’re an Imelda:

  ~ If you’ve bought shoes and never worn them because you didn’t want to damage them.

  ~ If you structure your day around the shoes you want to wear, staying in when you want to go out, just so you can wear your duck-egg-blue
grosgrain slippers.

  ~ If you’ve spent more on a pair of shoes than you would on a holiday.

  ~ If you own around ten almost identical black pairs.

  ~ If you’ve ever sustained injury from falling off a high pair and didn’t mind.

  ~ If you would rather lie and say you have athlete’s foot than loan your shoes to your flatmate.

  ~ If you’ve ever slept in a pair – and not because you were so drunk that you couldn’t take them off.

  Previously unpublished.

  Does My Base Chakra Look Big in This?

  Rumours had reached us that there was some sort of strange dancing you could do to reactivate your sex life. Image magazine sent me to investigate…

  I might have looked like I was just prancing around a room with ten others, but what I was actually doing was ‘Activating Kundalini energy flow in my body, creating a safe, sacred space for healing sexuality.’ So now for you.

  Tuesday night, Temple Bar, Synergy Dance – I had no idea what to expect. Speaking to the teacher, Danielle, beforehand, she had talked of Tantric energy and using dance to release sexuality and bring heightened awareness to mind, body and spirit.

  Because of the activating sexuality bit I’d brought Himself, a man who has no time whatsoever for anything even vaguely New Age. He pleaded to be absolved from going, but all I could say was, ‘You either come with me, or you accept that I may not be responsible for my actions on the bus home.’ He came with me.

  Riddled with preconception as I am, I had expected the class to be full of outré characters. Au contraire, dear reader. It was an object lesson in humility. They weren’t part of the crochet-your-own-yoghurt crew, they were perfectly normal-looking women (and one man). Not only that, but they were all slim and attractive – something must be doing them good. To try to find out more about the class, I buttonholed one pupil, a woman with the down-to-earth friendliness of an off-duty nurse. ‘It’s great fun,’ she told me, ‘especially the dancing in the second part. You can let go and make a right fool of yourself.’

  Then Danielle arrived – and my God, what a babe. She was slender and beautiful and completely relaxed with her body. (Although if my stomach was that flat and my legs that toned, I’d be completely relaxed with my body too, I thought enviously.)

  The first hour of the two-hour class involved lying on mats on the floor for a yoga-type visualization. It was actually wonderful. Danielle talked us through a relaxation process starting from our heads and working right down our bodies. The language was lyrical and mystical – much talk of energy, third eyes and golden light radiating from our hearts. When she exhorted us to feel the heat in our base chakra, Himself leant over to me and hissed, ‘Where’s my base chakra?’

  ‘Your bum,’ I whispered back.

  It was blissful and not even the tinkle and clatter of the restaurant kitchen over the road could impinge. ‘Pass us up dem plates dere, Keith,’ a disembodied voice ordered, and I simply snuggled deeper into the golden light.

  But then things took a turn for the uninhibited. To release anger and frustration, suddenly we were pounding the floor and ululating like uninhibited Algerians. Well, everyone else was. I wasn’t bad at the floor-pounding, but let myself down badly at the ululating. Next we were shoving out a leg like we were kicking a door down in Starsky and Hutch. ‘Out!’ we shouted at the tops of our voices. ‘Out! Out!’ The regulars were doing it without a trace of self-consciousness. I got as far as mouthing the word but my uptightness wouldn’t let me actually articulate it.

  I was aware too of the silence emanating from Himself beside me. I couldn’t, just couldn’t look at him, then by accident my eye snagged his and we exchanged a flash of mortification so searing it almost lit up the room.

  And then came the Dancing.

  This was the bit I’d been dreading. I am Irish, therefore I am inhibited. I don’t even like the bit at Mass where we have to exchange the sign of peace with the person beside us, so the thought of ‘expressing’ myself through free-form movement made me break out in a sweat. What if someone saw me? We began by being orang-utans, moved on to picking imaginary berries, then discarding them, and I have to admit to enduring one of the worst twenty minutes of my life. Woodenly, miserably, I shoved my lumpish, unrhythmic body around the room. On every rotation we passed the clock and I silently begged it to hurry up.

  Next we moved on to dancing like the elements, beginning with fire.

  ‘Sparkle like a flame,’ Danielle called, waving her arms in a manner that could only be described as flame-like.

  I wondered if this was what was going to end my marriage, but to my great surprise, when I snuck a look at Himself, he was making like a flame like there was no tomorrow. All the others were giving it loads as well.

  ‘Stay grounded,’ Danielle said anxiously, and her concern wasn’t misplaced because seconds later one of the flames (my husband) went careening into the stereo. He didn’t even miss a beat and next minute he was dipping and flowing like a river. (We’d moved on to water.)

  Mid-prance we passed each other. He twinkled wickedly at me and grinned, ‘Do you feel like a shag?’

  ‘No,’ I replied, ‘I feel like an eejit.’

  However, after a while I kind of got into it. I was never really in danger of going flying into the stereo (not like some I could mention), but that terrible, crippling self-consciousness lifted. I honestly think that if I went regularly or if I did one of the day-long workshops, I’d manage to give my mortification the slip once and for all. And I got a glimpse of the joy the others were experiencing. By now Himself was shaking his hips like a dervish, while I watched in open admiration. In truth, I hadn’t known he had it in him.

  By the time the class ended, I felt that even if alternative spirituality isn’t your bag (man), you can really enjoy yourself if you leave your cynicism at the door. And your ego too, if you can manage it (I obviously couldn’t). In fairness though, I can’t say it’s made any noticeable impact on my sex life. But somebody had a good time, because as we got into the car to go home, Himself remarked idly, ‘Maybe we should go again.’

  *

  The following day, I had an appointment at the Harvest Moon Centre with Doctor Yvonne Murphy, who works in tandem with Danielle. She’s a fully qualified chiropractor of the conventional medicine kind, but with a difference. She doesn’t just fix your gammy back, she ‘realigns’ your spirit as well. Most of us are ‘out of balance’ – our male/female sides are skewed or our right brain/left brain balance is off, and once we’re back in balance, it’ll ‘heal sexuality and bring heightened awareness and awake mind, body and spirit’.

  The Harvest Moon Centre – like the place the night before – was full of surprisingly normal-looking people: a blonde woman in a black trouser-suit with an umbrella was emerging from having her chakras realigned, a man with the short, tight curls and meaty build of a rugby player was off to the flotation tank for a session. He jerked his thumb towards the tank and casually asked the receptionist, ‘I’ll just hop in, will I?’

  Yvonne took me into a therapy room and within seconds she had discovered the banjaxed bit of my neck. The top of my spine points slightly to the right and I had always thought it was that way because I’d got mild whiplash while on a rollercoaster in Alton Towers. But Yvonne’s assessment of it was that my right-brain was working overtime and my left-brain was basically sitting around, slumped in front of the telly, watching Oprah.

  She says that our back problems are a map to our emotional and spiritual states. Men mostly come to her with lower-back problems, which means their base chakra – which correlates to survival issues like careers and finances – is giving them gyp.

  Her language, like Danielle’s, is mystical – the chakra hit-rate per sentence is high. If you were in any way sceptical you might be moved to be scornful and Yvonne is wryly aware that this is the case. Not that she seems to care – if you could bottle her serenity you’d really be on to something. Besides, as she numb
ers hard-nosed business people among her clientele, she can afford to ignore the sceptics. Accountants and lawyers come to her to get their analytical left-brain to stop bullying the artistic right-brain. Even more intriguingly, greyhound and racehorse owners employ her to work on their animals. In fact, she treats more racehorses than she does human beings! And somehow I can’t imagine the horsey set standing for any nonsense if they weren’t getting results.

  Up on the couch I clambered. At the best of times I’m a massage junkie – call it hands-on healing (Yvonne does) or call it massage, but I love it. With her focus on my neck, skull, face and spine, she twiddled and rubbed me, and it was blissful.

  After about twenty minutes of pressure, she told me that my right-brain and left-brain were more in alignment. Honesty compels me to admit that I didn’t feel anything that I might describe as a shift, but I didn’t care. I felt so good I was floating, and my only regret was that I hadn’t been more out of alignment to begin with, because the treatment would have gone on for longer.

  When I got home, Himself was waiting for me with eager anticipation.

  ‘Well?’ he asked hopefully. ‘Is it all systems go?’

  I’d ordered him to be on stand-by in case my realignment unleashed a torrent of sexual energy. But your reporter made her excuses and left – I was simply too relaxed. And he balefully muttered something about women always preferring massage to sex.

  Later that evening, as we prepared to go out, he limped towards me. ‘I think I threw my hip out last night when I was being a gust of air,’ he winced.

  I had no time for sympathy. ‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘and be honest. Does my base chakra look big in this?’

  First published in Image magazine, October 1999.

  Botox and Other Miracles

  Image magazine were doing a special issue focusing on plastic surgery. As I’d just come back from Los Angeles, where I’d been researching my sixth novel, I was the very woman for the job.