Elegance and Innocence (12 page)

7 pm
and I’ve had a quick shower and am reapplying my make-up. In an effort to look striking and sophisticated (I was reading
Vogue
on the loo), I’ve pencilled in my brows with kohl pencil and now look like I have Down’s
syndrome. I try to compensate for my uni-brow by applying a thick coat of red lipstick and before I know it, am a dead ringer for Bette Davis in
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
. As I’m frantically wiping it all off with wads of toilet roll, it occurs to me that ten minutes before you’re due somewhere is obviously a bad time to experiment with your look. I manage to tone my make-up down to a Joan Crawford level and am searching through my underwear drawer for a pair of matching hold ups. Will I ever get out of the habit of saving runned tights, ‘Just in case’? Finally locate matching pair and step into my new Little Black Dress, a strappy, short Karen Millen design in thick, black stretch satin, which was the very first purchase I made after my promotion. I’m Audrey in this dress and love it more than anything in the world. However, do NOT feel the same way about black T-bar shoes, as I slip them back on my aching feet. Grabbing a little black satin evening bag I found in the sales, I try unsuccessfully to cram the entire contents of my purse inside and then relent, telling myself that it’s OK, I probably won’t need my address book, a needle and thread, and seven tampons for a single evening out. (My period isn’t due for a week.) Force myself to make do with a lipstick, a compact and my change purse, but not before doing a brief visualization exercise I learnt from reading
Feel the Fear but Do It Anyway
. I’m only fifteen minutes late as I hail a cab to the theatre.

8 pm.
I’m standing alone, like a total lemon at the theatre bar, when I magically spot two old friends, Stephan and Carlos. Stephan’s a set designer and Carlos works in the wig department of the RSC. They’re buying and suddenly things start to look up. After all, I’m going to need a few drinks to make it through the entire evening as half of the happiest, non-speaking couple on earth. The bell goes. Go on then, just one more.

God, that bartender is cute.

10 pm.
Supper with husband’s agent and the director at The Ivy. A little bit tipsy. My husband is still not talking to me (this is Advanced Silence) but did rescue me from drowning in the tub. Don’t normally bathe this much but seems I kept missing my mouth at dinner.

May go back to acting. Flirted all night with the director, who couldn’t keep his eyes off me. Think I made quite an impression.

3 am.
Wonder what Oliver Wendt is doing and who with.

J
Jewellery

The contents of a woman’s jewellery box are a chronicle of her past; more telling than her underwear drawer, bathroom cabinet or even the contents of her handbag. The story the jewellery box tells is a romance and hopefully for you, it is a grand and passionate one
.

Jewellery is the only element of an ensemble whose sole purpose is elegance, and elegance in jewellery is a highly individual matter. It is therefore impossible to say that only a particular kind of jewellery should be worn. One thing however is certain: an elegant woman, even if she adores jewellery as much as I do, should never indulge her fancy to the point of resembling a Christmas tree dripping with ornaments
.

Finally, a word to would-be husbands: an engagement ring is often the only genuine jewel a woman owns, so please, invest in one of a respectable size. The shock of paying for a good quality ring will
evaporate the instant you see your thrilled fiancée proudly displaying it to all of her friends and relations. And secondly, do not underestimate the advantages of buying only from the very best. A ring box from Cartier, Asprey, or Tiffany’s will be prized almost as much as the ring itself. And this is one occasion where you do not want to be accused of economizing!

I close the book and lean it softly against my chest. Imagine receiving a box from Cartier or Asprey! As for Tiffany’s, I’ve never been in – not even to browse. I wonder what it looks like inside. Or what it’s like to walk in on the arm of a man who loves you, knowing that when you come out, you’ll be wearing a diamond ring or maybe a sapphire surrounded by brilliants. I gaze at my hand resting on the duvet and try to envisage a sparkling, bright diamond solitaire on my fourth finger. Closing one eye, I concentrate as hard as I can but still, all I see is the pink, slightly wrinkly flesh where my finger and knuckle meet.

I look over at my husband, who’s reading in bed next to me, and watch as he furiously gnaws away at a non-existent hangnail on his thumb. He’s reading the evening paper as if it’s written in code, scowling as he diligently scours its pages for clues.

He never gave me an engagement ring.

It slipped his mind.

He had planned to ask me to marry him, but evidently in much the same way that you plan to keep a dental appointment. Later, he claimed not to know that when you propose, it’s customary to present the woman with a ring.

I told myself at the time that we were beyond romantic gestures; unorthodox; unique. And we congratulated ourselves for not indulging in any of the common, more banal expressions of love. I even looked up the word romance in the dictionary once, obsessed with justifying its absence from our relationship.

‘A picturesque falsehood,’ I read out, closing the book triumphantly. ‘See, it’s not real. Romance is a lie.’

And he nodded sagely. How reassuring, to know the emptiness surrounding us is real.

But, as I sit here, pretending I can see a diamond on my bare finger, it occurs to me that intellect can be a terrible, deceptive thing.

I remember the day he asked me to marry him. We were in Paris in the middle of a heatwave. He’d just finished the run of a play where he was a dog, scrabbling around on all fours, and had badly hurt his knee. He was limping around with a stick and I had a cold. The French love suppositories. All the cold medicines seemed to involve inserting something into your bottom, so I preferred to sniffle and sneeze as we stumbled around the great city, determined to absorb its beauty.

The relationship had come to a standstill several months ago. I knew he was going to propose because there was nowhere else for it to go and I was deeply irritated that he hadn’t asked me yet. I was tired and ill and wanted to go back to the room, take off my dress and lie down. But I knew he was measuring each place we went as a potential setting for the proposal. So I stumbled on, pretending to find everything charming, lest my bad attitude spoil the moment and delay it further.

And I wore a dress because that’s what you wore when someone proposed to you.

We drifted through the landscape of Paris, hoping to find on a bench or in a narrow alleyway the reason for our continued association. Eventually we came to sit under the shade of some trees in the Jardins du Luxembourg.

‘You’re not happy,’ he said at last.

‘I’m afraid,’ I conceded.

He waited patiently in the stifling heat.

‘Remember when we first met,’ I began, feeling a wave of nausea building, ‘and you had a … a friendship …’

He pressed his eyes closed against the burning sun. ‘That’s over,’ he said. ‘You know that’s over.’

‘Yes, but it’s what’s behind it that scares me.’

He kept them closed. ‘There’s nothing behind it, Louise. We’ve been all through this.’

But it wouldn’t go away; it was like a third person on the bench between us.

‘I’m only saying, I mean, as a reflection of your true self …’ I persisted.

He opened his eyes. ‘There is no “true self”. I am who I make myself to be. It was a normal friendship.’

‘But you had to break up with him. When we met, you broke up with him. Friends are pleased when you meet someone. They stick around, get to know them. You don’t meet them in the park one wet Wednesday afternoon and quietly inform them that “things have changed”. They don’t disappear – not when they’ve been calling you every day for years …’

He grabbed my wrist. ‘What do you want from me? What is it that you actually want? Do you want me to pretend it never happened? Is that it?’

‘No, but don’t you understand? How do I know it won’t happen again?’ I tried to pull away, but he held on tightly.

‘Because I won’t let it. I just won’t let it.’ His voice was defiant but his eyes looked exhausted, lost. ‘I promise you, Louise, I promise I won’t let you down.’

He let go and my arm dropped limply by my side. I stared at the sandy walkway. Everything inside me was telling me to leave, to walk away.

We’re in Paris. It’s romantic. A French family walks by, complete with small children and grandparents, as if they’d been cued in by an unseen director.

I say it quietly, but I say it. ‘What if that’s your true
nature. You cannot, no matter how hard you try, deny your true nature.’

He rises slowly and holds out his hand. ‘I’m not going to have this conversation again. Either you accept me the way I am or not. It’s up to you.’

I get up. I tell myself I’m crazy, stupid. He loves me, doesn’t he? He says the words, doesn’t he? I have a cold; I’m being dramatic.

And I don’t want to be alone.

We walk. We stumble on, into the heat. It never becomes more comfortable.

The next night he proposes to me in the middle of Le Pont Des Arts and I accept.

I close the book and look again at my husband. He’s completing the crossword, methodically crossing out each clue as he goes, writing the answers in pen.

He has kept his promise; he has not let me down.

1. We’ve always lived comfortably, in the best neighbourhoods, often within walking distance of the West End.

2. He has never been rude to me in public or, to the best of my knowledge, unfaithful.

3. He has looked after me, managing the household finances, taking care of me when I’ve been ill, and constantly seeking to improve our home.

4. He does the laundry. I regularly come home to find
my clothes neatly folded and stacked on the bed.

5. When he’s working in the West End, he picks up the Sunday papers outside Charing Cross on his way home on Saturday night so that we can stay up late and read them together.

6. We often go for long walks together late at night, all over London, when the city is transformed by stillness.

7. He is a good companion.

8. And he has brought me the perfect cup of tea every morning in bed for the past five years.

Who am I to say this isn’t love?

The first time I saw him, it was at the opening night party of
The Fourth of July
. It was my first big professional role and I was ecstatic with the feeling that I’d made it; I’d arrived. The audience had given us a standing ovation and everyone was certain the play would transfer into the West End. I was wearing my favourite red dress, a long swirling concoction of silk crêpe that flowed and clung to the body. The lilting, pulsating rhythms of Latin music filled the house in Ladbroke Grove where we were celebrating and some of the guys were mixing pitchers of margaritas in the kitchen. The rest of us were dancing on the patio, swaying and turning with our arms outstretched, laughing too loudly in the cool, early autumn air.

When he appeared, a gatecrasher from another theatre, tall and slender, with light hair and pale blue eyes, I barely noticed him. He wasn’t my type. He was in a new play at the Albery and doing well for himself. But I had other plans. My live-in boyfriend had cheated on me a few months earlier. I ignored it at the time, but tonight, wearing my red dress and drinking too many margaritas, I was determined to pull.

I don’t know how or why I came to be kissing him. But the next morning, nursing a violent hangover and lying very, very still on the cold, flat futon in the bed-sitting studio I shared with my cheating boyfriend, I realized I’d made a mistake.

I called to let him know I’d fucked up, that it was just something stupid and to laugh it off but instead he must’ve heard the confusion and fear in my voice. ‘Let’s meet for a coffee,’ he said. ‘Tell me what’s really bothering you. Maybe I can help.’

And so we met in a little Polish tearoom off the Finchley Road, where they served lemon tea in glasses and the air was thick with the fug of goulash soup. It rained and we sat at a tiny corner table and he listened while I told him the whole, sordid tale of my unfaithful boyfriend. I apologized for ‘behaving badly’ and he nodded his head and said it was all understandable under the circumstances. And then we walked, very slowly and for a long time through the quiet streets of West Hampstead. He told me he’d ring me again, to see how I was doing.

The next day we met in the outdoor café in Regent’s Park. It was too cold to sit outside, but we did anyway. Moving indoors required more commitment than we were prepared to make, so we perched gingerly on the edge of the wooden benches, shivering. And again, I told him things I hadn’t intended telling anyone and he listened. All the feelings that had been bottled up for the past six months came crashing forward and I didn’t think I’d be able to bear it.

The day after that we met on the other side of Regent’s Park and walked until we came to a street in Fitzrovia. He stopped and said, ‘This is where my flat is.’ I followed him up the winding stairs and we sat on a sofa in the front room. It was a tiny flat but everything was immaculate, spotless. It was so different from the bed-sitting room I shared with my boyfriend, crammed full of books, papers and clothes. There was space to breathe here; everything was visible. We talked and I cried and told him I didn’t know what to do. He held me, and I stayed curled up in his arms for a very long time.

Then we went into his bedroom.

The bed was made so tightly, so perfectly, that there were no creases anywhere. The books on the shelf were in alphabetical order. Everything was white – the bedclothes, the carpet, the bookshelf, the desk. He took out a volume of poems. We sat on the bed and he read to me ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’. And when he finished, there were tears on his cheeks.