The Children's Book

needed, trotting across the yard, running up and down stairs, walking into Lydd. She should buy something sensible, which, if assiduously scraped and polished, would look acceptable below her plain skirt, when she got it. She hoped for a moment that Geraint might have given her enough to buy both shoes and the red belt. She calculated. As long as she didn’t go into the shop, she could imagine owning the belt.

“I have been wondering what you are dreaming about,” said a pleasant voice behind her. Elsie jumped. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” said Herbert Methley. “I’ve been watching you thinking for maybe twenty minutes, and I couldn’t resist, in the end, asking about what you are thinking and frowning and murmuring to yourself. You don’t have to answer, I know I’m impertinent.”

Elsie laughed. “Shoes. I’m thinking about shoes. For the first time in my life I’m buying new shoes, for me. I can’t make up my mind. I don’t know how to decide.”

“And as long as you don’t decide, all the shoes are yours to think about,” said the writer.

“Yes, and the smart red belt with the arrow there. I could just about manage the belt if I bought cheaper boots—but I don’t need the belt, I need shoes that don’t hurt.”

“This is indeed a momentous decision. I am a storyteller, you know, and I do need to know how it will come out. I think you must try on the shoes—as many as you can, so that you may see your feet in every possible light and every possible form. You will certainly find that some of the shoes that look good in the window, that promise comfort and prettiness, will turn out to be deceivers, will pinch your heel or hurt your great toe. And others, that look like nothing much sitting there on the stand, will turn out to feel like gloves that were made specially with your feet and your elegant ankles in mind. In an ideal world you would be buying walking shoes, and dancing shoes, and everyday housework shoes, but you need to find one pair that can be all these at once, I assume, and that isn’t easy. I hope you will let me help you. I do have a good eye for women’s feet, I have always been told. I really want to know how this tale will come out—”

So they went into the dark, leather-scented shop, and Elsie sat on an upholstered chair, with Herbert Methley kneeling on one side of her and the shoe-shop boy on the other, bringing more and more shoe-boxes from his store behind his counter. Methley stroked her feet as she inserted them carefully into black shoes and brown shoes, shoes with little heels and shoes with punched trimmings, and serviceable brogues. He was uncannily accurate about which shoes would prove to fit her feet comfortably, rejecting those that were too heavy, and also those that might prove to pinch. He made her walk in the shoes, and turn her body round so that he could see from all angles, and asked where the tips of her toes reached, and whether her heels scrubbed. It was oddly intimate. They had it down to two pairs, long after Elsie on her own would have made a rushed decision for the cheapest and ugliest, out of a sense that she didn’t “deserve” to have anything better.

“They need to feel like gloves, Elsie. They need to support all those tiny little bones that do so much work in the arch of your foot, and you need to be able to move all your toes, without feeling you’re wearing a shoe-box instead of a shoe. I myself like this black pair with the little heel best. At a pinch—or not at a pinch—they have a certain elegance—severe but fine—and yet I am sure they will be serviceable.”

Elsie agreed to buy those shoes and was prepared to walk back to Purchase House in them. Methley told her she must not. “Wear them every day for a short time, until you and they know each other. You need to warm and stretch them, little by little. To make them yours. May I walk back to Purchase House with you? I was out for a stroll anyway, and should like the company.”

Elsie was confused. Herbert Methley was, in her eyes, old, part of the father’s generation. Maybe his friendliness and—and—assiduity were fatherly, though she didn’t think so. He was much uglier than Geraint, and much more interested and interesting than Geraint. She had change from Geraint’s half- crowns, though not the price of the red belt. She said she would be glad if he walked back with her, and then he produced, like a conjuror, a small parcel, tied with string.

“For you,” he said. “Open it.”

It was, of course, the red belt.

“I can’t.”

“Why not? It isn’t often that one can surprise someone with their heart’s desire. And you are quite right, you have excellent taste, it is a lovely belt.”

It was shaped to sit on the hips, and point downwards, like an arrow, between them. Herbert Methley insisted on fastening it round her, his long hands, very briefly, echoing its form, lingering a few seconds, pointing down.

After this they walked back, over the Marsh, side by side, aware of each other. Methley said

“I wonder if you would mind very much if I put your feet—and your shoes—into a novel I am writing? They are just what I need as a solid example—”

“Example of what?” Elsie asked, neither pleased nor displeased.

“It’s a novel about—about what’s wrong with women’s lives. Women’s clothing is a form of oppression and confinement.”

Elsie considered the jump of subject from shoes to freedom. She said she’d never had occasion to think about these things. She had too much to do, she almost said, and restrained herself, for she felt the sentence would sound silly.

“But you should think, Elsie. Why should your brother be in gay Paris, and you here as a domestic slave, with no shoes?”

“He’s a real good potter. I’m not.”

“Have you ever thought what you might be, if you had a real choice?”

“There’s no point,” said Elsie.

She thought about her discontent, making ends meet for those feckless and aimless females in Purchase House. She thought of the pantry, full of lascivious pots. There were several in which the female figure lay back with her fingers between her legs, at the spot towards which the arrow on the new red belt was pointing. She was aroused and disturbed—not entirely pleasantly—by Herbert Methley. He stirred her up, as Geraint, and the fisher- boy, did not. She needed to keep her head.

“And what is to happen to your—your character with no shoes? Does she end well?”

“She works out her own freedom, and is able to dance barefoot,” said Methley. “She learns to live.”