"There is really nothing in the world that can be compared to red shoes!" Hans Christian Andersen (1845)
The Red Shoes. I always loved the ballet film with Moira Shearer and the fairytale on which it was based. It tells of a girl who put on red shoes and began to dance. At first it was fun but the shoes soon took on a will of their own and would not stop dancing. The girl was obliged to dance day and night until she was exhausted and desperate. The ending is gruesome in true Hans Christian Andersen style, as she finds an executioner and begs him to chop off her feet to stop the dance. She dies in the end; the dark heart of most fairy tales.
A miniature pair of Freed red satin ballet pumps hang on a hook in my bedroom. A tiny pair of red Start Rites unearthed by my dear friend Séan, from his childhood remind us of more innocent times.
But I have some new red shoes and until last week they sat patiently in their box. Waiting. Last winters' Stella McCartney red shoes; toweringly high, almond shaped toes, cut low for maximum toe cleavage, in beautiful scarlet leather. Remember them? Blatant and unapologetic "f**k me pumps".
But what to wear with such audacious shoes? Well when your feet are that suggestive the rest of the look has got to be demure. I put on a crisp tailored shirt, dark denim skinny jeans, and piled up the badger hair messily.
As I arrived to paint the town red, the red shoes took on a life of their own. The effect was quite astonishing. I know a couple of self confessed foot fetishists who like a good pair of heels on a girl, but suddenly I noticed lots of men just staring at the shoes. One was just gawping open mouthed! And not at me, at my feet! I became quite irrelevant as the red shoes cast their spell. A friend renowned for his inappropriate comments and sick sense of humour informed me, in graphic biological detail, the effect the shoes were having on him. Heavens!
In the loos a girl came up to me and said, "Your shoes are amazing!"
When I pointed out that they were hurting my feet she suggested taking them off, "No. I've come this far, I'm keeping the motherf**ckers on!" I laughed and I meant it. They were killing me, but I was not going to succumb to the ballet pumps I had wisely thrown in my bag. They would have their moment much later when we couldn't get a cab and had to walk home at 4 in the morning.
As I wandered along carrying the red shoes I wondered whether they might be part of my own private fairy tale. Since last winter I seem to have been under a giddy spell of my own, dancing further and further away from the safety and comfort of my old life. The red shoes have seen me dance out of my marriage, into an unknown world where I only have my conviction for comfort. I found the will to live, to really live, my life. This is no dress rehearsal. L to the I to the V to the E!
I am lucky. I was able to take my red shoes off. I put them back in the box. Executioner not required. Yet.