No Pain No Gain

On Sunday I was sitting in a beautiful Northamptonshire drawing room with an assortment of prize winning novelists, top biographers, Emeritus Professors and Mary, listening to an extraordinary discussion about biographers’ ethics.

‘She actually told me she would go into a room in someone else’s house and if there was a locked desk drawer and she happened on the key she would have no qualms about opening it. She said it was her duty.”

‘No!’ we all cried.

‘Well, he told me that the man he wanted to interview, the poet’s first boyfriend who had never spoken to a soul about it was it now a Priest, and now my friend’s research assistant Joe has offered to enter the Catholic seminary where this man teaches, just for a few months, in the hope of finding out what really happened.’

‘No!’ we all cried again.

‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if he finds he has a true Vocation and ends up becoming a Priest?’ I said. I could almost see the Broadway musical version in my mind’s eye: nuns with guitars, the final triumphant conversion crecendo.

‘When the Lord closes a door somewhere he opens a window,’ I remark. Everyone looked at me rather oddly.

After this conversation I knew it would be time to go for a long walk. In my suitcase were three pairs of high heels and not much else. More and more I don't know how to feel confident in flat shoes. They make me feel underestimated and misrepresented. In fact the level of emotional discomfort flat shoes cause me is far greater than the habitual pain brought about by my quotidian 10 cm heels, especially now that I do special heel wearers’ exercises three times a week (50 lunges on each side,100 leg lifts, 200 calf stretches, 300 jumping jacks).

Wearing high heels on a country walk, through mud, up hills, whilst carrying a basket crammed with several dozen fresh picked Pink Lady apples, presents another considerable problem though: looking stupid. It would be all right if people would fail to notice my footwear, but the continual, I don't know how (or why) she does it s always make me feel a little like a fool. This time I thought I had found the perfect shoe for a long country walk. It was a brown chunky Tod’s court, whose sides where fashioned from the sort of faintly metallic mesh material they use for trainers and whose soul was rubber coated.

It also boasted some brown fake snake trim on the toe and a little narrow gross grain ribbon bow. It was elegant, and countryish in a highly Metropolitan way. I bet Madonna will buy these shoes I thought.

The walk began well, there were comments but not too many about the shoes and i fielded them as best I could. ‘They’re practically trainers!’ I protested. ‘They’re made by a driving shoe company!’ But it was a bit like showing up to play tennis telling people your floor length pink skirt with rows and rows of frills is suitable because it’s a Sportmax. Then Mary wanted to be carried and she looked so warm and cosy that I couldn't resist and so lugged her up and down a few muddy hills as well for a mile or two. My legs braced themselves, uncertainly. I popped a couple of neurofen as a precaution. The sun came out sharply and I also began to regret my thick country layers of wool and tweed.

A couple of hours later we were back at the house drinking tea and eating clementine cake. I gave my stylish hostess the presents we had bought her, a Nars eye compact called Misfit whose electric jade and creamy peach duo of shadows I could hardly bear part with. Mary presented the chocolates she had chosen in a large heart shaped tin and our favourite twelve Aromatherapy Associates miniatures. I went upstairs and examined my new shoes, picking off a modest amount of mud. I stroked my legs for a minute or two. Then I went to play tennis in bare feet.

Well, the next day I could hardly walk. I stayed in the house all day chatting and holding other people's babies so that they could go for walks. I didn't mention this to anyone, of course. Part of the shame that attaches itself to the high heel addiction requires that you never ever acknowledge the pain because how stupid do you look then?

In the late afternoon, after some drinks, the pain subsided a bit. It felt then as though I had done a very demanding exercise class, cross training with a steep incline carrying a 15 kilo weight. I began to wonder if I became a writer so that I could work at home in private, shoeless heaven. I went upstairs and wrote a couple of paragraphs in which my heroine compares her adored former shrink to a well stocked department store. Then it was eight o'clock and I put Mary to bed slipped into a party dress and some more high shoes and went down to the evening’s delights.

Susie Boyt’s latest novel is ONLY HUMAN (Review £7.99) susie@susieboyt.com