Goodbye, Jimmy Choo

by Annie Sanders

  Her tears, wonderful tears of mirth, poured down her face. Izzie started to smile uncertainly.

  “Misery?”

  “No, I’m fine really,” replied Maddy, stamping her feet and trying to control her hysterics. She could feel Izzie’s shoulders shaking with laughter too, as she caught the mood.

  “No, you cretin.” Izzie howled now. “That’s the name of the movie . . . Stephen King . . . with James . . . Caan . . .”

  “Aaah,” was all Maddy could reply, and collapsed onto the floor rocking with laughter. Pasco waddled over to her and threw himself into her arms, and for a few moments she thought she’d be sick again, this time from the effort of laughing.

  From the kitchen, they could vaguely hear the sound of ringing. “Isn’t that your mobile?” Izzie was pressing her cheeks as if in pain.

  Maddy pulled herself and Pasco to their feet. “It’ll be my mother. She always calls the mobile.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes. “She lives in some misguided hope that I’m always ‘out and about keeping busy.’” By the time they got to the kitchen the ringing had stopped and there was a voice message. She pressed the button to listen and Izzie held her ear close to the phone too, to hear what Giselle had to say.

  “Daarling, it’s Maman. Good to see you are too busy to answer the phone, but I’ve just been reading the Telegraph. What on earth is all this about you and your friend making some cream of Luce’s? Couldn’t believe my eyes—it must be you. Have you taken leave of your senses?”

  The message finished, and Maddy looked at Izzie in disbelief. Without saying any more, she ran to grab her purse. “Hold the fort for a moment. I’ll just see if the village shop has still got a copy,” and without looking behind her, ran out and slammed the front door.

  The speed with which she dived into the shop and grabbed one of the last remaining copies of the Daily Telegraph must, she thought, have confirmed the villagers’ growing suspicions that she had lost the plot completely since Simon had died. Maddy virtually threw the money at Miriam behind the counter, gasped a breathy “thanks,” and legged it out again.

  She laid the paper on the table and smoothed it out with her hand. “Where will it be?”

  “Well, I only read the Guardian, of course”—Izzie smiled superciliously—“but it’s hardly likely to be under world events or obituaries, is it? Try health and beauty.”

  Maddy flicked over the pages, virtually tearing the thin paper in her haste. There, on the left-hand page, next to a big article about diet drinks, were two columns of text with a small picture of one of their, their, little jars with Izzie’s drawing plain to see, under the headline “Pots of Gold.”

  Maddy ran her finger along the lines of text and read the words aloud:

  Well it had to be French, didn’t it? Only those clever continentals could create a beauty treatment that would be the elixir of life. But luckily for us British women, it was rediscovered by a couple of country housewives—

  “Housewives?” Izzie gasped in disdain. “How dare they?” Maddy read on:

  These two Cotswold earth mothers, Madeleine Hoare and Isabel Stock, stumbled by accident on the notebook of a nineteenth-century relative of Madeleine’s from the Cévennes region, and they have re-created it at their scrubbed pine kitchen table . . .

  “It’s bloody limed oak,” shrieked Maddy, incredulous. “Pleeese!”

  . . . a healing balm which they allege is the cure-all, treat-all cream that should be the only one to grace our bathroom shelf. The ingredients couldn’t be more “naturel,” including an obscure little plant exclusive to the vine-growing regions of France. The jar is delightful, the cream a mesmerizing shade of green, and though the smell might put you off, it’s no pain, no gain when it comes to the pursuit of perfect skin. When I tried some on my winter pallor, I have to confess an overnight improvement. Could this discovery have us chucking out the cleansers, toners, and moisturizers we so cherish? I could be convinced.

  Paysage Enchanté Baume Panacé (healing balm) costs £24.99 (plus £3 p&p) for a 100 ml jar and is available by mail order from Huntingford House, Huntingford GL53 0XX (01547 324867).

  They both stood in stunned silence for a moment. Then read and reread the article.

  “‘I could be convinced,’” whispered Izzie in awe. “Do you know what this means? Only the bloody beauty editor of the paper thinks we’re onto something. This is the kind of editorial most cosmetic houses would kill for.”

  Maddy felt panic grip her. “She’s put in my phone number, Izzie. Pru’s gone and put the phone number on the ruddy press release. You know what’s going to happen—we’re going to be inundated with calls from wrinkled and careworn readers. And look at the price she’s put—that’s five times what we were charging at the Fayre. We don’t take credit cards, we haven’t even got much stock left. What the hell are we going to do? What’s the readership of this paper?”

  “Oh, I don’t know—million and a half?” Suddenly the phone started to ring.

  It wasn’t until after Maddy got back from school and had fielded a further ten calls on the answering machine, that it stopped ringing long enough for her to get hold of Pru. She finally tracked her down in a taxi and had to shout to make herself heard above the noise of traffic in the background.

  “What the hell have you done? The phone has been nonstop all day—it’s gone crazy.”

  “Well, that’s gratitude! Actually, darling, I had no idea the papers would pick up the press release so quickly. Listen, I’ll call you back this evening and we’ll sort out how you can cope, but in the meantime take names and addresses and ask them to send a check payable to you. You have thirty days to fulfill a mail-order request anyway, so don’t panic.”

  That evening, Izzie came over after the children at both houses had been put to bed, and they sat down at the table with notepads and pencils, laughing at their efficiency.

  “Right, let the meeting commence,” said Maddy pompously. “What’s on the agenda?”

  “Well, Madam Chairman, we have had a squillion calls from people wanting pots of gunk when we have practically no stock and no raw materials to make any more.”

  “Thank you. Item two: panic! Izzie, this is dire. We’re going to have to get organized. Don’t we need to set up a company or something, so the checks can be paid into that? And it would help if we could take credit cards. And what about the stock?”

  “I feel sick,” said Izzie, refilling their wineglasses. “I’ve always been terrible at this kind of thing—I deliver my accounts to the accountant in a shoe box. Let’s face it, neither of us is renowned for our financial expertise, are we?”

  “If in doubt, make a list.”

  Over the next half hour they wrote down everything they needed: bank manager, credit card facility, pots and centpertuis, lavender, more oil, Jiffy bags, labels, and a new phone number. Valium, Maddy added as an afterthought.

  She leaned back in her chair. “You know who we need?”

  “Lillian.”

  “Got it in one. I’ll call her tomorrow. Meanwhile, let’s phone Pru again and see what she has to say.”

  Pru was remarkably uncontrite about the predicament she’d put them in. “Frankly, darling, I’m amazed, but I think the product has just hit a nerve. Perhaps we’re all fed up with the horrors of the twenty-first century—global warming, cloning, collagen injections, Botox, nanotechnology. With what you are offering, it’s cheap at the price. I was going to put it at forty-five pounds at one point, but I knew you’d blow a gasket. Now, you are both brilliant women, so get yourselves sorted and get as much help as you can. You need to decide if you want to take this seriously.” Maddy could hear her inhale her cigarette. “Oh, by the way, I had a call from the Daily Mail.” Maddy gasped. “Nothing to worry about, but they want to come up and do an interview with you both. Can I tell them Friday? But listen, girls—you’re going to have to think about your image here. If we’re going the back-to-nature route, you’re going to have to hide your Dualit t
oaster and forget about wearing anything Christian Lacroix. Think Mrs. Beeton meets—I don’t know—Greenpeace!”

  Chapter 10

  When the Daily Mail journalist and the world-weary photographer finally left, Izzie and Maddy slumped against the closed front door, wrung out and gasping for a glass of wine and a fag.

  “Oh God!” Maddy groaned. “I’m never going to live this down!”

  The phone rang again. It had been nonstop all morning. “Look, you get that.” Izzie heaved herself up. “I’ll get the essentials. Where’s the corkscrew?”

  “Paysage Enchanté?” Maddy purred in her professional voice. “Yes, certainly. No, I’m sorry, we don’t take credit card orders. Yes, certainly.”

  She gesticulated wildly at Izzie, miming her need for a pen to take down the details. Izzie hurled a crumpled envelope and an eyeliner pencil, scavenged from the depths of her crumb-strewn handbag, and Maddy wrote down a name and the size of the order, then hung up, rolling her eyes. “We’ve got to get a more efficient system going.” She sighed, adding the envelope to a pile of other scraps of paper. “This is pitiful!”

  Izzie laughed ruefully as Maddy handed back her eyeliner, now blunted beyond use. “I reckon we’ve bottomed out. We couldn’t get any more inefficient.”

  “Don’t you believe it! I’ve got an order here somewhere written in crayon on one of Pasco’s nappies! Clean, of course,” she added, seeing Izzie’s horrified expression as she poured out two generous glasses. “But I was upstairs at the time, and I didn’t have a notepad handy.”

  Izzie looked around at Maddy’s once beautiful kitchen. She’d have given a kidney to have one like it, or at least the way it had been before they trashed it for the interview. “Do you think we got the subliminal message right for them?”

  Maddy groaned theatrically. “Well, it must be right, ’cos it’s got everything in it now I hate.”

  “Yeah, yeah! I know, but it won’t take long to restore to its former beauty, and if it works and the orders keep on coming in like this, we could be solvent again by, er . . . actually, I have no idea at all! And we can go back to being cashmere Maddy and—”

  “Oxfam Izzie?” supplied Maddy helpfully, ducking the tea towel. “Okay, sorry. All right, even I can put up with it for one afternoon. You realize we’re going to need help with the money side.”

  “God! Is there anything we can do?”

  “Well, we know how to make the balm—and we are pretty talented at stage design. This house looks like a set for the West End.”

  Izzie gazed around at their efforts. “Yeah, Les Misérables!” A delve through the cupboards earlier that morning had revealed a rich seam of props: a large pestle and mortar, a mezzaluna chopper and board, some large earthenware bowls—all unused.

  Izzie had busied herself, steaming labels off bottles of Carluccio’s olive oil infused with herbs and put them out on display. A load of Robert Welch cast-iron ware was dusted off and arranged artlessly on the counters—what the hell was Maddy doing with a recipe book stand anyway?—copper-bottomed saucepans, salt pigs, wooden spoons. A lot of it Maddy seemed to have forgotten she ever had. Some items looked like wedding presents that had never even been opened—it was like the stock room at Divertimenti. By the end of the morning, virtually everything Maddy did use in her forays into the kitchen had been replaced by things she had never used.

  The hallway had proved less of a challenge. By the judicious use of dried flower swags, bought at great cost—both in terms of money and personal credibility—from a boot-faced woman in Ringford, who took great exception to their giggling, they had camouflaged the ultramodern light fittings. By stacking up wellies and walking boots, and the unused croquet set along the wall, they had created a reasonably homespun rustic effect.

  “I can tell we’ve got it right”—Izzie had laughed—“by the fact that you look like you’ve got a nasty smell under your nose when you stand back and look at it!”

  Maddy had moaned in mock distress. “My house, my beautiful house! It looks like a commune. All stripped-pine, scatter cushions, macramé knickers, and knit-your-own yogurt.”

  Preparing the house had been a picnic compared to transforming their own image. “You were right; you do look like a pig without your eye makeup!” Izzie had gasped as they stood back and gazed at themselves in the bathroom mirror.

  The final look they’d achieved was somewhere between Doris Day and Looby-Loo—all scrubbed rosy cheeks and neutral lippy, and thanks in no small part to Izzie’s hoard of old maternity clothes.

  Their enthusiasm was clearly not contagious, and the journalist and the photographer had looked afraid that they might catch something, accepting the offer of murky camomile tea without enthusiasm. The questions had been predictable, and within minutes Maddy and Izzie were working like a double act, expounding (and expanding) the virtues of Grandmère Luce as if they had known her personally.

  “Yes, she was an inspiring lady, all right,” Maddy had heard herself gushing. “In some ways, I’d like to think I could bring some of her amazing spirit into my life today and perhaps to share it with other women. Finding her book was like a link going right back through the years!”

  Izzie had winced at the mawkish claptrap and tried very hard not to catch Maddy’s eye. For some reason they had both adopted a gracious, oh-so-sincere manner not unlike that of Mrs. Thatcher in her more mellow moments. It was very hard to drop, once you’d started.

  The only tricky moment was when the hack had tried to steer Maddy into talking about Simon. Izzie could see Maddy’s eyes narrowing—she’d murder Pru—and jumped in quickly. “Our children are everything to us. We feel it’s vital to create an atmosphere in our homes that will give them a solid basis in today’s hurried world.”

  Maddy had calmed down now. “And the healing balm really works!” she chimed in. “That’s the thing to remember. By tapping into Luce’s wisdom and knowledge, we’re bringing women something they’ve lost over the years—and something they’ll recognize as being of value as soon as they see it.”

  Izzie now took a large glug of wine. “Well, thank heavens that’s over. Never again!”

  The morning’s post had brought another deluge of orders. After they’d snatched some lunch, Maddy set to again making up the recipe and Izzie, in a burst of efficiency, went through the pile of scribbled phone orders and prioritized them in date order. She’d finished punching out the figures on Will’s Fisher-Price calculator, and the final figure made her gasp.

  “Are you sure these toy calculators work?” She turned to Maddy. “’Cos if they do, we’ve got about six hundred pots to make up this week.”

  Maddy turned from the pan she was stirring on the Aga. “Well, this lot is only going to do about a hundred, and that’s it. We’re out of ingredients. We need more of everything.”

  “Right then. Where’s the phone? I’m going to make some calls.”

  Two hours later, she’d contacted every beekeeper in the county she could find in the phone book, but the lavender was proving a problem. She put the phone down despondently and turned to Maddy who was with Crispin, making him a cup of coffee and a hot cross bun. “Everybody is saying the same thing. If we buy it dried, even from the wholesaler, it’s going to cost the earth. And that will slash our profit margin.”

  “Why don’t you ask those hairy women in Wales to sell you some of their essential oil?” he asked, spraying crumbs over the table. “They do all the extracting and everything in the summer, when the lavender is fresh, and the oil keeps almost indefinitely. It’s biothermodynamic or something. They kept banging on about it when they were giving me the massa . . .”

  He trailed off sheepishly. But not soon enough. Maddy was on his case in a flash. “Crispin, were you about to say massage, by any chance?”

  “Well, yeah. I had a bit of a headache, after the drive and everything, you know. So one of them did my aura, and then another did my meridians. I didn’t ask them or anything. And it’s not like I e
njoyed it . . .”

  Izzie laughed, shaking her head incredulously. “You really got your feet under the table there, didn’t you? I reckon this biodynamic thing could make a great story. Maddy, have you got Pru’s number to hand? If we can get hold of this lavender oil, we should tell her all about it.”

  “Just as long as we don’t have any more journalists here, I’ll tell her anything you like!”

  Over the next two days, Izzie had visited about half a dozen of the beekeepers. Although most of them had a standing arrangement with a company in a local town that supplied the cosmetics industry, they were more than happy to sell their excess to Izzie and Maddy, particularly as they offered to collect it by car.

  It was Maddy’s job to lure Lillian away from her lucrative temping work in Oxford. It wasn’t as easy as they had hoped, and she’d had to dangle the offer of lunch as a last resort. She then put in a call to Jean Luc. Izzie listened as she gabbled down the phone at him in French, too fast for her to keep up with what she was saying, though she heard her name being mentioned a couple of times.

  “Right,” Maddy said when she had finished and referred to the notes she had made. “He says he’s found a bulk supplier of organic olive oil in Provence, but it don’t come cheap. I’ll call them later, and he’s promised me a consignment of centpertuis by Tuesday. He’s over here anyway on some other business.” Izzie worked hard to quash her glee at the news. Maddy laughed. “He’s incredulous that he’s actually encouraging this stuff to grow.” She mimicked his accent: “‘I can’t believe what you’ve got me to do, Maaaddee. A weed I struggle with for years—suddenly I’m giving it the best soil!’”