I said, ‘I’m interested in those shoes in the window.’ Still nothing from him, so I said, ‘The red and black ones. The women’s shoes. For my girlfriend. I was wondering what size they were. How much they cost.’
I don’t know why I spoke so hesitantly. I had bought women’s shoes often enough before. Harold still didn’t say anything but he ambled over to the shop window and with a lot of effort carefully extracted the shoes. He handled them roughly but with affection and held them out so I could look at them.
There was nothing soft or boyish about Harold’s hands. They were dark and gnarled, as stained and tanned as some of the leather he worked with. They were an old man’s hands and decades of work had made them strong and specialized. The grain stood out, revealing a pattern of small scars, gashes, crescents, healed flaps of skin where knives had slipped and cut into his flesh. And yet they had delicacy, were obviously capable of intricate, detailed work.
I looked at the shoes more carefully. Up close the standard of workmanship was even more extraordinary. I reached out to take them from him, but he held them back. They were for my eyes only. They looked as though they were more or less the right size to fit Catherine, and even if they hadn’t been, they would still have been exquisite examples to own, have around and include in the archive. I peered inside to see whether they had a size. They didn’t, but they did have the maker’s mark, one I had seen before; the outline of a footprint with a lightning flash at its centre.
‘I’ll take them,’ I said.
Harold ignored me and replied, ‘I don’t feel absolutely comfortable about selling them, you know.’
‘No?’
‘I made them for a client, a long-standing client. Unfortunately she doesn’t have any use for them now. She died before I could finish them.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said automatically.
‘I don’t see why. The sorrow is all mine. It was a pleasure to make shoes for her. More than a pleasure.’
The mention of his dead client had pitched him into a sudden and profound depression. I really didn’t need this. I just wanted to buy the shoes. I didn’t even much care what the price was. I certainly didn’t want to get involved with some stranger’s personal tragedy. I did my best to change the subject. I said, ‘I’ve been past your shop before, but I never realized you made women’s shoes.’
‘Ladies, women,’ he said. ‘I don’t care so long as they’re appreciative.’
He looked down at the shoes he was holding, then at me.
‘I know it sounds absurd,’ he said, ‘but I’d like to be sure these shoes will be going to a good home.’
This was crazy. What did he want from me? It’s no easy business to convince someone that you are a worthy possessor of their handmade shoes, and I wasn’t keen to try. On the other hand I did want to make the purchase. All I could say was, ‘I think my girlfriend would be very appreciative indeed.’
He looked at me even more closely, as though by examining me he would be able to learn what kind of woman I might be involved with.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘They were in the window. Let’s do business. How much do you want for them?’
‘It’s not a question of money,’ he said.
Oh, Jesus, I thought to myself, what does he want me to do? Undergo an initiation rite?
‘I’m not selling these shoes because I need the cash,’ he said. ‘In fact, I’m tempted to keep them. But I happen to believe that a shoe needs to function before I can consider it a success. Shoes have to be worn before they can live. I want my shoes to live.’
I nodded. What he said made perfect sense to me. It was a sentiment I shared, but I didn’t want to agree too readily in case he thought I was trying to con him into parting with the shoes.
He said, ‘I wouldn’t want you to buy them blind. You bring your young lady in and let her try them on. We’ll see if they’re a fit.’
I realized he was talking about something far more subtle and complex than the matter of foot size. It seemed to me that he wanted to be sure that Catherine fitted the shoes rather than vice versa. It occurred to me to tell him that Catherine already owned a pair of his shoes, but I resisted on the grounds that he might well be insulted to learn that his work had turned up in a second-hand clothes shop in Islington. However, I didn’t have the slightest doubt that Catherine would measure up to any standard he cared to set. Whether she would want to participate in this charade was another matter altogether.
She took some persuading. She didn’t want to play games with some cranky old shoemaker. Furthermore she said, reasonably enough, the chances of the shoes fitting her were remote. Who did I think she was? Cinderella? And, even if they did fit, she wasn’t sure she wanted to wear a dead woman’s shoes. She said she might not like the shoes, but I assured her there wasn’t the slightest chance of that. What actually clinched it was telling her that the shoes contained the same trade mark as her zebra-skin ones. Those shoes, she said, were the sexiest, best-fitting shoes she’d ever owned. Finally, though still a little warily, she agreed to come with me.
A couple of days later we went to the shop. The shoes were not in the window and I wondered at first whether we’d waited too long, whether some more persuasive customer had beaten us to it and talked Harold into selling them. We entered the shop. Harold looked up, saw us, and said, perhaps sarcastically, ‘Ah, my latest customers.’
I introduced Catherine. He looked her up and down. It was not prurient, not even sexual, and yet his gaze seemed to strip her bare of everything but essentials. He motioned for her to come in behind the counter, into his work area, and to sit down on a blue velvet banquette that was installed there. The moment she was seated he squatted at her feet and removed the shoes she was wearing, strappy sandals, nothing too extreme. He took her bare feet in his old dark hands and touched them carefully. Again there was nothing lascivious in his manner and yet it was an act of great intimacy. Harold’s gnarled, scarred fingers squeezed, stroked and examined Catherine’s feet. He traced the paths of veins and muscles, bent the toes back and forth gently so he could see the way they moved and functioned. He didn’t smile or look pleased. It was too serious a matter for that. He appeared professional, disinterested, but at last he nodded to himself in satisfaction.
He went to a locker, opened it, got out the red and black shoes and brought them for Catherine. I could tell immediately that she liked them. Harold slipped the shoes on to her feet. Her pale skin lay in stark contrast to the soft, dark leather and the metal tracery. Most important, the shoes fitted perfectly, absolutely perfectly. They could have been made for her. At the time that didn’t seem so strange; I knew that, unlike Cinderella’s glass slipper, there were any number of women whose feet these shoes would have fitted.
Catherine stood up and paced across the workshop while Harold and I watched intently, though with our different forms of fascination. I was looking through the eyes of a lover. He, I thought, was looking through the eyes of a craftsman. But we were both delighted, as was Catherine. She said she loved both the look and the feel. She went back and forth a few more times, her walk becoming a feline, predatory stalk. Then she smiled at Harold and, in his ancient, boyish, uncertain way, he smiled back.
‘They’re something special,’ she said.
Harold nodded in agreement. He was pleased that she liked them, but I got the feeling it was she who was being judged not the shoes. Harold did not need anyone else’s opinion to confirm the worth of what he had made.