A New Pair Of Shoes

It’s surprising how many things a new pair of shoes can fix. There’s something about being four inches taller – and in shoes, not boots! I am so sick of boots, and winter, and the cold. They come in a fancy box, with a little bag in which to keep them afterwards – although actually it’s not such a little bag because they are – not fuck me shoes – more fuck you - they have great big wooden platform soles. Quite intimidating. I could do a lot of damage with them.

Anyway, they lift my mood – they are surprisingly comfortable too. I walk around the house trying them. It’s too cold today to wear them out, but soon – soon. Winter can’t go on much longer. None of it can go on much longer. If things had worked out, it wouldn’t be like this – so cold, and I wouldn’t have to buy unsuitable shoes to change things. I might have bought them anyway because I like shoes, but I wouldn’t have needed to.

It lasts about an hour – the novelty - which is longer than a line of coke, but slightly more expensive, though with shoes you can do it all over again the next day, and that’s more than you can say about a line of coke. For the moment though, I am lonely and so tired of it all . Not lonely in the physical sense, because I haven’t had much chance to be lately, and anyway I like being alone – it’s not that.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

When Marnie’s gone I’m exhausted. It’s always quite dramatic when she’s here and this visit ended in tears. It’s not long before I get her thank you email. She says she feels embarrassed because she should be supporting me, not the other way around, and she apologises for being so untogether. She says she always thought Joe was better adjusted than her and she tells me the story of how he came home from school one day and she was down about something. Money probably. And so he disappeared for a minute, and when he came back into the room he was carrying two large glasses of brandy, which she didn’t like in the first place and never drank.

I write straight back, and say she’s supporting me in lots of ways and that is partly true. She makes me laugh. It’s nice to talk to someone with a brain. I like to hear her stories of Joe, although sometimes I find that hard. I think I’m still pretty angry that he isn’t here – after all these years. I try to be grateful that he was here at all, but quite often I’m just angry.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The sheiks fell through quite soon after they were suggested, and I’m glad in a way. It would have been interesting, but it was never going to be exactly what I had in mind. I invite Marnie over, so that we can find something else.

It turns out she’s staying the night – the next two nights actually, so I have to go out and buy food – I don’t have anything in the house, and I pick up some wine too – although when I fetch her from the cottage she insists on bringing a basket with her –– the kind they sell at Liberty for a hundred pounds, and inside she’s put a half empty bottle of wine, with a silver bottle stop loosely where the cork should be. I suggest she leaves it at home – but she says she doesn’t want to be a drain on me and so we drive the whole three miles of hairpin bends home with a loose bottle of opened wine on the floor in the back. I can hear it rattling all the way.

There are pages and pages of unbelievably cheap holidays on the internet, surely we can find something? Unfortunately, the minute you begin clicking on stuff you realise that it’s not going to be as easy as you thought:

“What about this one?”

We both peer at the screen. A succession of images scrolls by, slowly. It’s depressingly like the other five hundred we’ve looked at so far today – perhaps there are one or two more palm trees. The swimming pool might be a slightly different shape. The writing that goes with the photographs promises heaven – nirvana if it’s five star – a sumptuous, luxury overload, they will pamper our every need. It all sounds awful and my heart sinks further with each new destination.

In despair I google places I went to when I was rich - some of them were nice. I am throwing two grand at this – surely that’s going to be enough for most places? It isn’t. Marnie doesn’t have a clue about money – I thought I had at least some small idea but it turns out I don’t either. And visiting those sites makes it even worse because Marnie seizes on the new places; “Now that’s what I call good design – it makes such a difference to one’s state of mind. I think you really do need to be somewhere aesthetically pleasing. Simple but beautiful.” I feel bad telling her that simple but beautiful comes in at ten grand for the two of us for a week, and that’s before we’ve paid for incidentals, like drinks. She gets through quite a few of those in a day so I think we need a fairly large margin for error.

When my brain is exploding and I feel like giving up on the whole thing, she says how about a break, and could I possibly show her how to sign up to facebook because she’s changed her mind about it and thinks it might be fun after all, and I leap at the chance to shut down the photographs of the perfectly charming rustic thatched igloos just off the beach in Goa.

We sign her up and she spends the next six hours glued to the screen having a wonderful time. I sit next to her and try not to laugh as she instantly acquires twenty friends – mostly godchildren – and then proceeds to stalk her way through their photograph albums. It’s very very funny and she says she hasn’t enjoyed herself so much for years. She cries at the number of photos on there of Joe – she says it’s like he still exists in cyber space. It’s hard to realise that this is probably the most time she’s ever spent on the internet – I’m so glad she’s found something to distract her a little while. Living out here, away from London, can be isolating when you aren’t used to it.

The next day we explore Santa Monica, virtually – my original choice, and with Marnie’s help, I identify several perfectly simple artist’s studios to rent - very zen – all of them way outside our budget. Some even have sweet little gardens with hot tubs and loveseats, but then Marnie says she can’t actually walk more than about fifty feet without toppling over – it’s to do with a condition she has – something with a long name. so even if we could afford it, she wouldn’t be able to manage there. We are silent for a minute or two. I am getting a bit despondent. Then suddenly she looks bright again; “I had completely forgotten about Zanzibar! Always wanted to go. Shall we see what they have there?”

She doesn’t mean to be like this – she really doesn’t – and she’s enjoying herself, despite the fact that we aren’t getting anywhere at all. She just has no concept of money – none at all. I don’t think she ever has had. From time to time she apologises and I say it’s okay. Once she tells me the story of when Joe was little and she was working full-time, and the nanny she had was too frightened to go shopping for some reason, so they had to order everything from Harrods, which of course meant that they never had any money.

The last morning – just before she goes home, it all changes. It turns out that the rent from the London flat – her only source of income - is ten days late. The tenant is the underage daughter of someone big in Moscow – mafia she thinks - and he hasn’t paid. One more day and everything will start bouncing: the cottage rent, the mortgage … she will be completely fucked. She calls the lettings agent and they say nothing legal can be done for another couple of weeks. She looks like she’s going to cry.

I can’t offer her two glasses of undrinkable brandy like Joe, but I can help in other ways. For once, the poncey bank account which I inherited is good for something. People who have accounts with them are far too precious for Bangalore and phone queues – oh no, it’s straight through to Scotland every time, and they fall over themselves wanting to help. So I tell them to, and while I’m telling them, Marnie rushes off to the loo because she’s embarrassed. When it’s all done she comes out looking determined, and says she’s going to go to London that day, let herself into the flat (she has a key) and reason with the Russian – make her call her bigshot dad in Moscow.

We kiss and she leaves and I sit down on the sofa, exhausted and feeling slightly sorry for the poor Russian girl and her father. I don’t mind about the money in the slightest – or the holiday – it was turning into a total nightmare. I do mind that Marnie has to live on a knife edge like that though – month to month, and I still mind so much that Joe isn’t here to make it better for either of us.

Just before I go to bed there’s an email from him. He says Marnie has jammed his inbox with hundreds of facebook notifications – she has annexed almost all his photographs on there – but I’m not to say anything because it’s sweet and he doesn’t mind really. Then he says he’s thinking of baling out of Tucson at the beginning of April, but might do a quick reccy before – soon in fact.

I still have no idea where he is planning to bale out to. I don’t think it’s me. Marnie perhaps? And all over again, I wish I could go away somewhere and forget about it all, alone this time perhaps. Maybe it would work. Maybe I'll just buy another pair of shoes.