Footsucker

Sixteen

A moment came when I knew something was wrong. Catherine phoned me — a rare event in itself — and she wanted to meet. This wasn’t exactly breaking the rules, but it wasn’t the way we normally did things. I was the one who usually made the running. And then she said she wanted to meet on neutral territory. She suggested London Zoo.

‘As neutral as that,’ I said, and I feared the worst.

It was a cool grey day and the zoo wasn’t crowded. We met by the aquatic birds of Europe and I saw at once it was worse than I could have expected. Catherine was wearing a pair of trainers. They were possibly very expensive and fashionable and loaded with statements about status and fitness and youth, but I was hearing a very different statement. She wanted to walk and talk.

‘I think it’s over,’ she said. ‘I think something’s happened.’

I suppose it didn’t come as a complete surprise but that didn’t make it hurt any the less.

‘What sort of thing?’ I asked as coolly as I could.

‘I don’t know exactly, but I know I can’t carry on like this.’

‘Like what?’

‘You know what I’m talking about.’

Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t. Either way I wanted to hear her name it, to spell it out, but at first she wouldn’t or couldn’t.

‘You know,’ she said. ‘I just ask myself, and I think you should ask yourself too, is this a sensible way for two adults to conduct their lives?’

‘For me it’s the only way,’ I said.

‘I’m not even sure if I believe that. But for me it’s not the only way.’

‘Lucky old you,’ I said. ‘Was it bringing Rosemary to your flat that did it?’

‘It didn’t help.’

‘OK,’ I said. ‘It was just a one off. It was a variation. We tried it and you didn’t like it, so, fine, we won’t do it again.’

‘It wasn’t only that.’

‘Was it showing you the archive?’

‘The archive is pretty strange, you have to admit.’

‘OK, I’ll admit it if that helps. Was it Harold and his shoes?’

‘Harold’s pretty strange too.’

‘Creepy you said.’

‘Yes, he’s creepy, but he does make nice shoes.’

‘He does.’

We had arrived at the primates. The monkeys were throwing themselves at the wire fronts of their cages, playing to the gallery, showing off, mouths flapping with what you know is not laughter. Caged animals, the stuff of metaphor, the stuff of overworked imagery. Nature bound and perverted. I thought of the monkeyskin shoes Harold had made for Catherine. It was as if the whole zoo was a source of raw materials for shoemaking.

‘So it’s all got too strange and creepy for you, has it?’ I said.

‘Something like that.’

‘I’ve scared you?’

‘Something has.’

‘You know,’ I said sadly and calmly, ‘I’ll never find anyone who has feet as perfect as yours.’

‘That may or may not be true,’ she said. ‘But either way, so what? I mean, be real, what does it matter whether or not a woman has beautiful feet? What does it mean?’

That could have got me very angry, but everything seemed to depend on staying cool, on remaining in control, of myself if not of the situation.

‘It doesn’t mean anything at all,’ I said reasonably. ‘That’s the whole point. Beauty never does mean anything. Beauty is just a fact. It has no moral dimension. It has no consequence in itself. But in this case it has some consequences for me. I see a beautiful pair of feet and I want to act in a certain way. And that’s all that matters. The fact that it matters to me.’

She turned away.

‘Don’t turn away,’ I said. ‘Would it do any good to say I love you?’

‘But you don’t,’ she snapped. ‘I don’t even know if you like me. You’re obsessed with my feet, but then, you’re obsessed with everybody’s feet.’

‘Not true!’ I protested, but she took no notice.

‘I’m not stupid,’ she continued. ‘I’m not demanding the full-blown romantic love thing, but in general I don’t think you can love a person just for their feet, much less for their shoes.’

‘Can’t you?’

‘No, I don’t think you can. Really. Look, I know this is no time to start quoting Spinoza …’

‘You’re going to quote Spinoza?’

‘Sort of. I did a course in college. It’s no big deal. It’s just that he says love is a desire for unification with the other. And I’ll buy that. It sounds like sense to me. You can be unified with a person. You can’t be unified with a foot or a shoe, can you?’

‘Can’t you?’

She spread her hands in a gesture of denial, to say that if I didn’t understand something as simple as that, then I was even more stupid than she thought.

‘So you’re leaving because of Spinoza.’

‘I’m leaving because of me.’

‘OK, so let’s talk about you.’

A regretful turn of the head, a stiffening of the body, a facial expression that said she knew all along it would have to come to this.

‘I have a problem,’ she said. ‘I think there are several problems I might have. But I’m so confused by all this stuff that I don’t know which of them is the real one.’

‘So talk me through the possibilities.’

‘OK. I’ve made a few notes.’

I couldn’t believe it. She took a tiny, ringbound notepad from her pocket and opened it. I could see a lot of dense black writing slashed with arrows and crossings out, starred with asterisks, edged with doodles. She didn’t exactly read from it but she referred to it often.

‘OK,’ she said. ‘One: I have often thought of myself as a sexual adventurer, adventuress, whatever. And at first you were an adventure. A foot and shoe fetishist was a novelty. But fetishism isn’t an adventure in itself. In itself it’s just strange and obsessional and repetitive. Sometimes I think maybe I’m just bored with this particular adventure and it’s time to move on.’

She said it in a detached way, as if reciting a case history or exploring a bit of character motivation in a film review.

‘But you only think that sometimes,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘Sometimes I think, two: maybe I’m not as much of an adventuress as I thought I was. Maybe you’ve taken me too far, too fast. Maybe I only want to play at being an adventuress, only want to have little adventures. This stuff with the archive, this stuff with Rosemary, with Harold, with shoes in department stores, with pedicurists, with coming in my shoes, maybe you’re too serious, too extreme an adventure for me.’

‘It doesn’t feel that way to me,’ I said. ‘I think you’re a real adventuress all right.’

‘Yes?’ she said. ‘In that case we can come to option three: maybe what’s happened is that you’ve shown me that I’m even more of an adventuress than I thought I was. I’ve done things with you that I’ve never done with anybody else. It’s been scary but it’s also been pleasurable. And the scariest part is just how pleasurable. Maybe I’ve recognized that I could go all the way, whatever that means, could go a long way too far, and maybe I’m drawing back because I’m just sane enough to see how crazy I could be. If I carried on with you I don’t know where it would end.’

I nodded, but I was agreeing with the theoretical position, not agreeing that this was necessarily the case with Catherine and me.

‘Or maybe there’s another answer,’ she said. ‘Maybe I’m not really any sort of sexual adventuress at all. Maybe I really do want the full-blown romantic love thing. And I realize this is going to sound dumb to you, but maybe I do want to be loved for myself.’

I was tempted to go all philosophical and sixth form on her and ask how she defined ‘self’, but I thought better of it.

Catherine said, ‘But again, either way, whichever way, it makes no difference. Either way, I’m calling it off. Don’t phone me. Don’t try to see me. If you really want to hate me, just think of me as a stupid, scared woman who simply got cold feet.’