The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

by Ruth Hogan

  In the park baby ducklings, merest wisps of feathers and air, are buffeted across the pond by the gentlest of breezes. I am terrified that they will become separated from their parents and gobbled up by a passing Canada goose or a predatory pike. The fields are full of knock-kneed lambs; woolly, button-eyed babies trotting unsteadily after their mothers. Children on school visits to friendly farms will coo and fuss over them, and in a few short weeks they will be herded, frightened and bewildered, onto trucks and driven to the slaughterhouse (no school visits here). Baby white fleeces stained red, lamb chops on a plate. Spring lamb. No wonder I don’t eat meat. And then there’s the Grand National. A field of noble equines; fiery eyes, gleaming coats and rippling muscles. But legs of glass. Long, fine, brittle legs of glass. Easily broken, rarely mended. The Grand National; always the last race for some. You can bet on that.

  I hate the spring.

  My place of work is one of those large Victorian houses that face the park. The gravel crunches beneath my feet as I walk up the drive to the huge front door, immaculately painted in British racing green and resplendent with original brass letter box, doorknob, knocker and bell pull. Helen, who is our receptionist here, takes a perverse pride in keeping them polished to military standard. She regularly grumbles that she is not employed to do the cleaning, but refuses to entrust the brass to Dorothy who is.

  The impressive hallway is tastefully decorated in muted Farrow & Ball, and has an intricate mosaic tiled floor. The stained-glass panels on either side of the door filter the sunlight onto the tiles to produce a dance of pattern and colour. A large, gothic hat and coat stand lurks against the wall to the left of the front door, and there are two lushly verdant aspidistras (affectionately known as the ‘maiden aunts’) in ceramic pots enthroned on mahogany plant stands on either side of the central staircase. To the left of the staircase is the waiting room, which houses a selection of grand, wing-backed leather chairs, a square glass-topped coffee table flaunting copies of Homes & Gardens, The Lady and GQ (under which Helen hides the copies of Hello!, OK! and the People’s Friend) and a large rectangular aquarium containing a shoal of languid, jewel-coloured tropical fish. At the far end of the room, opposite the window, is a polished wooden counter, behind which Helen is seated. She is on the telephone.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that you’re in so much pain . . . and you can come anytime?’

  ‘Well, we could squeeze you in at 2.30 p.m. today if it’s urgent.’ The change in her tone is almost imperceptible, but her face makes her irritation very clear. ‘You’re going to be at the hairdresser then?’ She covers the mouthpiece and hisses in my direction ‘So, not so much “indescribable agony”, as “a bit of a twinge”?’

  The Park Clinic offers three types of therapy: psychotherapy, physiotherapy and acupuncture. Helen says we should be called ‘Needy, Kneading and Needles’. I’m the psychotherapist. I retrained after leaving the council; finally made use of my degree in psychology. Epiphany said it was like an arsonist becoming a firefighter, but in truth it was part of my plan to stay alive. When Gabriel died and I began my education in drowning, there was one time when I went too far and almost died. The water was very cold and I stayed under too long. Someone dragged me out just in time and I made out that it was simply a foolish accident. But I knew that it was more than that, and I learned a valuable lesson from it. I’m a survivor – I don’t want to die. The problem was that I was at the mercy of my emotions – I lacked control, and sometimes my grief could override my will.

  So, I came up with a survival plan. Firstly, I got Haizum. I would never leave him – he is now the love of my life. Secondly, I trained to be a psychotherapist. I learned to understand my emotions and with that knowledge came a certain degree of control. I have never told anyone about how I nearly drowned, not even when I was in therapy myself as part of my professional training. To be honest, I’m ashamed and rather embarrassed. I may be many things, not all of them pleasant – impatient driver, erstwhile fire-setter, biscuit-dunker – but one thing I’m not is a quitter. And to drown, whether deliberately or through carelessness, would definitely count as quitting. My survival plan has been enough to keep me alive. But now, I want more. I don’t want my life to be defined by someone else’s death, even if it was my only son’s. Haizum has stopped me from dying, but now I want to live again instead of just surviving. Even in spring.

  The clinic is owned by Georgina, the physiotherapist, who lives in a large apartment upstairs with a tarantula called Marion and an African grey parrot called Moriarty (she says they are much better company than her ex-husband, and far less trouble in the bedroom department). Georgina is an impressive Amazonian sort of woman in her late fifties, with silver hair hacked into an unruly bob and piercing blue eyes. She strides about the clinic like an over-enthusiastic hiker, talks like an old-school BBC Radio 4 announcer, and is Brown Owl to the local Brownie pack whose pixies, imps and sprites idolise her. I have never seen her dressed in anything other than her clinic coat and/or combat trousers and Dr. Martens boots, and, in winter, a selection of enormous jumpers that look as though they have been customised by a gang of angry mice.

  By way of contrast, the acupuncturist, Fennel, is a nervous, bird-boned woman who looks like a bean stick with a hat on. Her dreary twinsets and long, narrow corduroy skirts are accessorised with brightly coloured stripy tights (just visible above her crêpe-soled, sensible shoes) and dangly ethnic earrings, which she believes add a certain joie de vivre to her style. She is mistaken. She looks like a demented rag doll and I avoid her as much as possible. I wouldn’t trust her to sew on a button, let alone stick needles in me.

  My consulting room is behind the waiting room and has a beautiful view of the garden. It is what I like to describe as a ‘comfortable’ room, and what Helen prefers to call ‘messy’. But the randomness is deliberate, and carefully constructed. I know exactly where everything is, and no one is allowed to move anything. If they did, I would know. There is a large walnut desk whose polished surface is almost totally obscured by a laptop marooned amongst books, piles of paperwork, a bowl full of old glass marbles, photographs of my beloved boy and Haizum and a heavy Bakelite telephone. There is also a baby aspidistra, a niece of one of the maiden aunts, in a chipped, blue-glazed planter, decorated with rather luscious-looking cherubs, and a large glass snow globe containing a scene of Paris. When I am feeling stressed after seeing a particularly difficult client, the cold, smooth dome is soothing to touch, and a few turns of the key and a couple of gentle shakes produce a magical, musical world in which I can lose myself until the scowl on my face fades away. I have also been known to invite exceptionally troublesome clients to gaze into its depths and take a few moments to relax, to buy myself some time to dredge up something even remotely constructive to say to them when the only words that immediately spring to mind are ‘For goodness’ sake, bugger off and get a life!’

  Facing the door is a grand open fireplace with lustrous green and deep blue tiles, and a carved wooden surround. Above this is a large, framed print of a windswept woman in a billowing dress and a wide-brimmed straw hat striding out with two greyhounds on a leash. There are hills in the background, and a luminous blue sky filled with cream cushiony clouds. It is a glorious painting by Charles Wellington Furse called Diana of the Uplands and I never tire of looking at it. I have a rather battered swivel chair behind my desk, and two comfortable, high-backed chairs and a squashy sofa. There are a box of tissues, a jug of water and a glass on a small round side table between one of the chairs and the sofa. And there is a bottle of vodka in the bottom drawer of my desk.

  The intercom on my desk buzzes and Helen announces the arrival of my first client. The people I see come to me for a wide variety of reasons. I even see some to help them with bereavement. Those are the clients I feel least comfortable with. Having failed so spectacularly to deal with my own, I always feel like an obese dietitian or an ambisinister (word of the day – clumsy or unskilful with both hands) brain sur
geon. I am a tired but veritable cliché, like the builder who never finishes his own kitchen extension, or the hairdresser who never finds time to blow-dry his own hair. Today’s client is Errol Greenman and the only problem I have with him is trying to keep a straight face. I open the door to greet him, and he comes in and sits down on the squishy sofa. As usual, he is wearing a plain grey shirt, flared jeans and a sleeveless pullover which looks as though it has been knitted by his mother. He is forty-three years old, still lives at home with his parents and has never had a girlfriend. Or boyfriend. Or friend. He collects Action Man dolls and enjoys attending Action Man conventions. He only eats food that is white, red or brown and never mixes two types of food on the same forkful. Astonishingly, none of these things are the reason why Errol comes to see me.

  ‘So, Errol, tell me: how have things been this week?’

  Errol sighs and shakes his head. ‘Terrible. It’s happened every night. I’m so sore I can barely walk and I’m worried that my parents are going to find out. They’d be horrified!’ When he speaks, two globules of cottage-cheese-like spit form in the corners of his mouth and stretch like string hinges when he opens it.

  I nod encouragingly and ask him to go on.

  ‘I’m beginning to wonder if I should handcuff my hands to the bed before I go to sleep,’ he announces, dramatically.

  I bite my bottom lip to discourage the smile that is threatening to sabotage my professional demeanour.

  ‘Well, it might help, I suppose. But I’m not sure it’s advisable. Tell me exactly what happened.’

  ‘It’s the same as usual. It’s always the same. I have my milky drink at 10 p.m., go to bed and read for fifteen minutes, and then I turn out the light. The next thing I know, they’ve taken me and done horrible, unspeakable things to me and when I wake up I’m in the hall, or the kitchen or the bathroom. One of these nights, they’ll leave me in the garden, or they won’t bring me back at all!’

  ‘And what makes you think they’ve done terrible things to you?’

  Errol looks coy and wrings his hands theatrically.

  ‘The bruises. They’re so sore, and they weren’t there when I went to sleep. And on Tuesday night, when I woke up,’ his voice drops to a whisper, ‘I’d had an accident in my pyjamas.’

  At this point I’m forced to look away and pretend to be making a note of something. I do genuinely feel sorry for poor Errol, I promise I do, but he’s a very difficult man to help. His mother has confirmed to me that the bruises are caused by Errol colliding with the furniture in the dark. I spoke to her with his permission (on the proviso that I didn’t mention his specific problem) and she told me that he had done it since he was a little boy. But it’s very difficult to help a chronic somnambulist who insists that, rather than sleepwalking, he is abducted nightly by aliens. I could suggest the installation of closed-circuit cameras, which would prove to Errol that the furthest he goes on his nocturnal travels is the downstairs of his parents’ home, rather than the outer reaches of space. But I suspect that alien abduction, albeit imaginary, is the most exciting thing that happens to Errol, and it might be cruel rather than kind to deprive him of it, until he finds something equally thrilling to replace it. Mine is not an easy job.

  There are days when I wish I were Diana of the Uplands.

  Chapter 18

  ART

  Haizum bounds excitedly across the park towards me with something red clasped between his jaws. He skids to a halt just in time to avoid body slamming me, and proceeds to murder his prey at my feet. It is Sally’s woolly hat. I scan the park anxiously, searching for her untidy figure, and see a group of youths in a circle over by the pond, jeering and pushing at a victim I can’t see, but know immediately to be Sally. I grab Haizum and march over to them (less Diana of the Uplands, more Attila the Hun). There are five of them: boys aged about fifteen dressed in low-slung jeans and hoodies, and flashy trainers that demonstrate how ‘sick’ they are. Sally staggers around in their nasty little ring-o’-roses circle, red-faced and incoherent with rage. Her hands and arms are flailing furiously, but the slaps and punches she is throwing are easily dodged by her much younger assailants.

  My voice is calm and steady, but with what I like to think of as an indisputably steely ‘don’t fuck with me’ undertone. My absolute fury renders me absolutely invincible.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Wot the fuck’s it got to do wiv you, bitch?’

  This from the ringleader. He wasn’t obvious at first. He looks much the same as the others. Perhaps a little more attractive – slightly taller and with a bit of a swagger. But then I noticed his eyes. Dull, ice-blue, dead-fish eyes. As though his life has already leached away any emotion he may once have been capable of feeling, and all that’s left is a corpse-cold automaton. I can almost hear the duelling banjos. This boy is straight from Deliverance country. Haizum doesn’t like his tone. He places himself between me and the boys and raises his lips to display his potentially dangerous dentition. This is accompanied by a rumbling growl guaranteed to loosen the most constricted of bowels. The other youths begin to break the circle, backing away. The ringleader remains, his eyes still fixed on mine. Haizum moves forward and I place a restraining hand on his collar. Conversation is pointless.

  ‘Just fuck off before my dog rips your throat out.’

  I sense he is not used to this type of reaction. He is used to fear, abuse or anger from his victims. Loss of control. As he turns to follow his fellow hoodies, he spits back at me, ‘I’ll remember you. Fuckin’ whore!’

  ‘Good. You should.’

  Sally is in a dreadful state. I fix what I can with soothing words, the return of her hat (with a few ventilation holes in it courtesy of Haizum) and a mug of sweet tea from the café in the park. Surprisingly her scrambling switch is off, and once she has blown her nose with prodigious force several times, swallowed some of her tea, and smoked a rather scrawny roll-up, she is able to tell me what happened.

  On her usual afternoon visit to feed the crows she had noticed the boys gathered by the edge of the pond, and could hear the ducks flapping and squawking loudly. She went over to investigate and found the loathsome little shits throwing empty beer cans and lumps of rubble, taken from the park warden’s yard specifically for this purpose, at the ducklings on the pond.

  ‘I shouted at them to stop and threatened to call the police, but they took no notice. The nasty-looking one – thinks himself King of the Crap Heap – he simply laughed in my face.’

  She takes a sip of her tea and Haizum rests his head consolingly on her lap (he is probably also looking for food).

  ‘But then I could see he was going to turn his attentions to me. He’d thought of a new entertainment.’

  Her voice quavers slightly and she begins to roll another cigarette. She had been right. Sensing another vulnerable victim to amuse himself with, Deliverance Boy had turned his pack on her. They had snatched her hat and thrown it to one another over her head before discarding it on the grass. They had grabbed the bag of bread she had brought for the crows, and two of them held her arms whilst the ringleader held her nose and force-fed her the bread until she was afraid she would choke. Finally they surrounded her and pushed her roughly between them, shouting insults and obscenities, revelling in her distress.

  ‘If you hadn’t turned up, my dear, with the Big Fucker here, I’m sure something horrible would have happened to me.’

  Sally insists on buying me a second mug of tea, and Haizum gets a Scotch egg as a reward for his chivalrous behaviour. She asks me my name.

  ‘Masha.’

  Sally smiles and pats my hand.

  ‘That explains why you are always in the cemetery! You’re Mr Chekhov’s young lady – in mourning for your life, no doubt.’

  I need to change the subject. This is uncomfortable territory for me.

  ‘And what’s your excuse?’ I ask. ‘Your beautiful singing is wasted on dead people.’

  Sally lau
ghs. ‘It’s the best audience I’ve ever had! Besides,’ her face was serious again now, ‘singing is never wasted. And it is the only music you can carry with you everywhere and always.’

  I try to persuade Sally to report the incident to the police, but she insists that there is no point.

  ‘They won’t listen to me once my words start playing silly buggers. They’ll simply think I’m some batty old tractor with a wheel missing. And I’m dreadful when I get worked up. I shall be effing and blinding all over the department store. They’ll end up charging me with breach of the peace!’

  Sadly, she’s probably right. And even if the culprits were by some small miracle charged and found guilty, their so-called punishment would probably only amount to ‘accountability’ counselling sessions or twenty minutes’ community (dis)service. I manage to scrounge some stale bread from the girl behind the counter at the café. I walk with Sally across the park to feed the crows, and then we part at the bandstand to make our separate ways home.

  ‘Thank you so much, my dear. You and your wonderful hound are my guardian angels.’ And with a wave and a smile she is off to wherever is her home.

  The sun is still warm, and the trees are frothing with pink blossom.

  I hate the spring.

  Chapter 19

  ART

  Her caramel faux-fur coat is unfastened and through her cream chiffon blouse a tantalising glimpse of leopard-print bra is just visible. The magnificent breasts it shelves jiggle saucily as she prowls the aisles in her kitten-heeled boots. Having dropped Haizum at home, I have continued to the shop to buy some cigarettes. I rarely smoke these days, but I am still raging about poor Sally and feel the need for a medicinal glass of wine and a couple of cigarettes. I am now transfixed by this vintage sex-siren, who must be seventy if she’s a day. She is a woman who looks as though she is starring in a movie of her own life, and loving every minute of it. She is dazzling. Her long, platinum-blonde hair is twisted into a sexily dishevelled chignon, she wears several strings of pearls and even more make-up than Roni. Her eyes are heavily lined in black, her foundation could support a small bungalow, and her lips are painted into a perfect red pout. But somehow, on this woman, the effect is less lady of the night and more old-school Hollywood glamour.