Footsucker

by Geoff Nicholson

  I know roughly how a shoe should be constructed. First a pattern is made, and this pattern is then cut from the sheet of leather or fabric. This is a highly skilled job and needs to be in tune with the grain and thickness of the material. Once cut, the various upper parts are stitched together, then moulded on a last and brought together with the insole. The sole and heel are then attached, the sock lining inserted and the shoe can come off the last for finishing, i.e. waterproofing, polishing, decorating. That at least is what I’d read in the textbooks. My knowledge was anything but practical.

  I have always enjoyed the language of shoemaking. It seems strange and dark and contradictory. For example, the way a shoe is ‘lasted’ then ‘finished’. The man who cuts up the skins is known as the ‘clicker’. And much of the vocabulary seems potent and mysterious; words like the ‘welt’, the ‘shank’, the ‘vamp’.

  My knowledge was very useful when I first met Harold. It stopped him thinking I was a fool or a time-waster. I had been aware of his shop long before I was aware of him. I sometimes walked past it on my way to work. It was a small, old-fashioned, bay-fronted establishment, the window always full of clutter: lasts, brushes, shoe-expanders, shoe trees, bottles and tins of leather oil, liquid wax, hide food, dubbin, and a kind of polish called Parade Gloss. His name and his trade, ‘bespoke shoemaker’, were painted on the glass in gold leaf.

  Since he made shoes individually and to order there was never an array of stock in the window, but occasionally a pair of elegantly constructed brogues or riding boots would make a brief appearance while waiting to be collected. This was not the kind of shoemaking I was interested in. I was scarcely even aware that he made shoes for women at all, but then one day I was walking past his window and saw the most extraordinary pair of women’s shoes.

  The heels were long and slender, tapering almost to a point, and were made of some kind of burnished red metal. The shoes had peep-toes, the opening more or less semicircular, the edge of that opening, and the edge of the shoe’s mouth, again braided with the same red metal. The body of the shoe was made out of some supremely soft inky black leather, but a tracery of thin red-metal filaments ran across it, less regular than a spider’s web, more like spilled wax. The back of the shoe was high and from it emerged two strands of leather, one red, one black, to be tied together as an ankle strap.

  Everything about the shoes was remarkable – the extravagance, the richness of the shape and materials – and, even seen through the window, the workmanship was obviously exquisite. They looked totally, indecently out of place, these fierce but wholly feminine objects set amidst the dusty clutter of the rest of the window display. I certainly wanted to buy them for Catherine, but I think it was curiosity as much as anything else that made me enter the shop. How did such outlandish objects come to be here? Who had made them? How was it I had never come across them before?’

  I went into the shop and that was when I met Harold Wilmer for the first time. A counter confronted you as soon as you entered, and a long way back in the rear of the premises was a workshop. Here Harold was to be seen sitting at a small workbench, cutting out pieces of leather. He looked up quickly when he saw me and immediately stopped what he was doing, but it took a long time for him to stand up and come to the counter. Even when he arrived he didn’t say anything or ask me what I wanted, but he stared at me hard.

  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 fi
tting 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.

  ‘You can have the shoes,’ he said, and Catherine and I responded enthusiastically. We had passed the test and been found worthy: a slightly absurd test it seemed, but at least we could now pay, take the shoes and go.

  ‘How much?’ I asked.

  ‘They’re my present to you,’ Harold said. ‘My gift.’

  I said, hold on, I couldn’t possibly accept them for free. That was partly because I didn’t want to take advantage of the old man, but more importantly because I didn’t want to feel beholden to him. But he wasn’t having any of it.

  He said, ‘I put those shoes in the window hoping that they’d attract the right sort of customer. And they have. You’re here. They’re yours. I’m delighted. But there’s one condition.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No conditions. Let’s keep this businesslike. Let me give you some money.’

  Ignoring me he turned to Catherine and said, ‘The condition is that you let me continue to make shoes for you.’

  ‘What kind of shoes?’ she asked.

  ‘Any shoes I like. Anything and everything I want. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. And I wouldn’t charge you for those shoes either.’

  I looked at Catherine. Given her reluctance to come to the shop in the first place, I assumed she’d find the idea of ‘conditions’ as objectionable as I did. But she was now strutting around the place, modelling the shoes, looking and behaving like a sex queen, a smile of utter, indecent pleasure plastered across her face. There was no doubt that she’d agree.

  ‘Harold,’ she said. ‘This could be the start of something big.’

  When we got back to Catherine’s flat, we took the shoes out of their tissue-lined box and set them on a glass table in the middle of the living room. Normally I would have had the immediate desire to christen a pair of newly acquired shoes, to use them as an essential part of some sexual act or performance. But these shoes from Harold Wilmer produced a curious sort of inaction, a stasis. You had to pause, stop dead, and admire them.

  ‘They’re some shoes,’ said Catherine.

  ‘They are,’ I agreed.

  ‘It’s a pity Harold’s so creepy.’

  ‘Yes, he is a bit creepy, isn’t he?’ I said.

  ‘I wonder who he made the shoes for. Who she was. What happened to her? How did she die?’

  ‘I wonder what happened to the rest of her shoes.’

  ‘It’s a pity you’re so creepy too,’ she said.

  She was making a joke, but a part of her obviously meant it.

  ‘I thought my creepiness was what attracted you to me,’ I said.

  She didn’t have a ready answer for that.

  ‘I guess we needn’t ever go back to Harold’s shop,’ she said after a while. ‘I mean we have the shoes, right?’

  ‘That wouldn’t be fair,’ I said.

  ‘I guess not,’ she said. ‘A deal’s a deal. Besides, he does make amazing shoes. Where else are we going to get more shoes like this? For free.’

  I frowned. That part of the bargain was still worrying me.

  ‘I don’t like to get something for nothing,’ I said. ‘There’s no such thing. We’ll have to find a way of paying him. If he won’t take money we’ll have to give him something else. Food hampers or sweaters or whatever else he does for kicks.’

  ‘Are you sure he does anything for kicks?’

  ‘Everybody does something,’ I replied.

  Catherine seemed to be considering this proposition but then a new thought struck her.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘when we stop seeing each other, who gets custody of the shoes? You or me?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Maybe we could not stop seeing each other.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I suspect that isn’t an option.’

  Ten

  And so our relationship with Harold began in earnest. A few days later we returned to the shop and he began the process of fitting. He measured Catherine’s feet, made drawings and diagrams, jotted pages of notes to himself. That much was as expected, but then he said, ‘Now I need to make a cast.’

  ‘A cast?’

  ‘Yes, a sort of life mask of the young lady’s feet.’

  ‘You mean like a plaster cast?’ Catherine asked.

  ‘Yes. It’s not absolutely essential to the shoemaking process, but a cast reveals all sorts of details about the foot that are invisible to the naked eye. It enables me to create a more perfect fit.’

  There’s a famous photograph of Ferragamo surrounded by his lasts. They represent the feet of his famous clients and are marked with their names: Claudette Colbert, Greta Garbo, Sophia Loren. The lasts are made of wood and although they obviously depict the size and the shape of the foot very accurately, they don’t show any detail, no bone structure or veins, not even the toes. I could see that a ‘life mask’ would be a much more faithful replica, even though I wasn’t sure how necessary that detail would be when it came to making shoes.

  Harold continued, ‘I’ll need to make a mould using the sort of bandage they use to set broken limbs. Once I’ve got the mould I can use it to make perfect models of the feet. I
tend to use plaster but you could use lots of different things. I could just as easily make models in wax or plasticine, even jelly.’

  The prospect of having Catherine’s feet cast in jelly was a bizarre one. What flavour would I choose? Strawberry? Lime? Calves-foot? Incidentally, there are a couple of Aboriginal tribes in south-eastern Australia who used to eat the feet of their slain enemies; but I’m rambling.

  Harold began to make the cast. I thought it would be a difficult and painstaking process, but Harold went about it in a perfectly matter of fact way. He began by coating Catherine’s feet in Vaseline, which he described as ‘the releasing agent’. I watched his hands smearing the stuff all over Catherine’s bare feet, his short, dark fingers swirling over every part of them, smoothing them down, burrowing in between the toes. Harold retained an entirely formal air while completing his task, but for me there was something utterly profane about it.

  Then he asked Catherine to arch her feet as though she was on tiptoe or, I suppose, as though she was wearing high heels. He then wrapped the feet in the medical bandages he’d spoken of and slapped white liquid plaster over them. We had to wait for them to set, and Catherine was commanded not to move, but the whole business was brief and painless. Harold was soon cutting the set bandage and releasing Catherine’s feet. It took less time and was far less intimidating than the pedicure had been.

  Harold said he didn’t need us any more. He said that now he had the moulds he could make the actual casts in our absence. In fact, as Catherine pointed out after we’d left the shop, he could make any number of them, in a wide variety of media, and who knows to what uses he might put them. She giggled. The thought didn’t displease her.

  Before long a pair of plaster casts duly arrived for me in the post. They were meticulously packed and I undid the parcel with a kind of awe. Harold had been perfectly correct. I thought I knew every nook and crevice of Catherine’s feet, and yet seeing them this way, inert and perfectly white, revealed new features, small indentations and elevations that I had not noticed so clearly before. I was looking at a new map, a new geography. The effect was strangely hyper-real, as though the replicas contained more information, more detail than the feet themselves.