Nicola Barker - Clear - A Transparent Novel

‘Shoes on the fucking table ,’ Solomon mutters.

(Yeah. He wants the sex part real bad.)

‘All the shoes were antique. And even I could tell that it was a pretty amazing collection…’

‘What do you mean, “even I could tell…”,’ Solomon scoffs. ‘You’re shoe obsessed .’

‘I am not.’

‘You are .’

‘I am not .’

‘Well, you’re the only person I’ve ever met,’ he snipes, ‘who conducts formal burial services for their worn-out trainers.’

‘So I have an affection for Chuck Taylor,’ I snap. ‘What of it?’

Silence .

‘She actually had a couple of pairs,’ I continue (rather sullenly), ‘from the seventeenth century. French. Absolutely exquisite. Said she only ever wore them inside.’

‘People had smaller feet back then,’ Solomon opines.

‘Yeah. The shoes were minute. All hand stitched. But Aphra has tiny feet. Size four. So they fit.’

‘How tall is she?’

‘Uh…five two? Three?’

‘I have this image in my mind now,’ he mutters, ‘of a girl like a tent peg.’

‘The feet aren’t too small,’ I leap to her defence. ‘Not at all . They’re fine. In fact they’re…they’re nice .’

Solomon merely grunts.

‘They are . I saw them. Soft skin. Neat little toes. Finely arched. She actually tried on several pairs for me while I was just sitting there…’

‘Which shoes did you fuck her in?’

(Does this man have no concept of foreplay?)

‘On each tag ,’ I persist, ‘is a brief description of where she bought the shoes, how much she paid, and a detailed analysis of the previous person who owned them.’

‘ Wah ?’

Solomon does a couple of gay blinks.

‘ Yeah . See? Now you’re interested, eh?’

‘Is her nose that good?’

I nod.

He leans back in his chair. ‘I’ve actually heard about people like that before,’ he says.

‘Bull shit you have.’

He shrugs.

‘She had this pair of pale-pink pigskin boots from the nineteen- fifties —pearl buttons all up the sides — which stretched halfway to her thighs.’

‘You know what?’ Solomon shakes his head. ‘Not only is that historically improbable, but it’s physically unappealing . Is she blonde?’

‘Brunette.’

‘Even so. The insipid pink of the boot, coupled with all those dimpling acres of pale, white thigh flesh.’

‘Fantastic,’ I gasp.

‘Repugnant,’ he shudders.

We face a brief impasse.

‘You owe me fifty quid,’ I mutter (piqued for Aphra’s thighs), ‘Jalisa knew about the Putsch.’

‘True,’ Solomon concedes, and pulls his wallet from his pocket. As he opens it up and removes the notes (his gambling credentials are always impeccable — he’d rather eviscerate a small poodle than welsh on a bet) I spin his phone around and access his address book. Good .

‘So who owned them, then?’ he asks, pushing the notes over.

I glance up, guiltily. ‘A Frenchman. Very small. Had corns. Probably a dancer. Addicted to painkillers.’

‘And did she try them on while you were there?’

‘No.’

(This is a lie.)

‘Did you listen to any music?’

I squirm in my seat slightly.

‘Well?’

‘She has no music. She doesn’t listen to music. I only saw an old portable radio / cassette player and two tapes. The Best of Joan Armatrading and The Best of Abba .’

‘Only the best of everything for this filly, eh?’ Solomon chortles. ‘So a big Fuck-Off TV, maybe?’

‘Nothing fancy,’ I mutter, ‘and the TV was bust. Anyway, she claimed she “didn’t have time” for TV.’

‘Books?’

I clear my throat, anxiously. ‘Loads of cook-books. A Life on Earth hardback from the TV series…’

‘Which she presumably didn’t actually see ,’ Solomon murmurs.

‘And a dictionary. Collins .’

‘ Man , she’d better fuck like a hell-hound,’ Solomon observes soberly, ‘because By Christ this girl’s an immortal philistine.’

I merely shrug.

‘I mean what did you talk about all night?’

I shrug again. ‘Stuff.’

‘ What stuff?’

‘Her shoes. The weather. I don’t remember.’

Solomon frowns at me.

‘You’re not actually going to spill, are you?’

I blow my nose, poignantly.

‘I can see it in your face. You’re feeling guilty . You’re already developing some kind of pointless crush on this aspirant, star-fucking shoe-fiend. In fact you’re planning a fantasy mixed-music cassette tape for her, probably themed , even as I speak…’

My eyes widen, in shock (and hurt ), as he snatches up his phone and marches off to his meeting.

Then I grab a stray pencil and chew ferociously on its tip.

Okay. Right . Track Three…

Something really mellow.

Roy Ayers, ‘Everybody Loves The Sunshine’.

Bingo .

Then something jazzy — to show my emotional depth and range — but nothing too scary…

Ray Charles, ‘Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying’.

Followed by something really poppy ( What ? Adair Graham MacKenny taking himself too seriously? Not on your bloody nelly ). ‘Who Loves The Sun’. Velvet Underground.

And I’ll call it Aphra’s Autumnal Groové cassette.

(‘Twenty-four songs about the sun.’)

No. On second thoughts, skip the bit in parentheses.

Can’t be too obvious.

She prepares me a cup of White Tea in her tiny kitchen. I stand in the open doorway with a thumping headache and my sinuses prickling.

‘Made from the newest leaves on the plant,’ she whispers, ‘which the Chinese reserve for their most sacred tea ceremonies…’

She inhales the aroma, ecstatically, her eyes tight shut, then opens them and registers my jaded expression. ‘Pearls before swine,’ she mutters, passing it over (This girl is the last word in hospitality, eh ?) before hunting around in a wall unit and producing a bottle of 10-year-old single malt (from one of the more brutish of the Scottish islands), unscrewing the lid and drinking a nip from the cap.

(By the way that she winces I deduce that it has a kick to it like a bad gear-change on a Kawasaki 500.)

Perhaps it’s my blocked-up nose, but the tea is incredibly bland ( Sacred ? My arse). And (can this be just a coincidence?) she hasn’t poured herself a cup.

We tip-toe through to the living room. She shows me her shoes laid out on the dining-room table. There are dozens of others, too, packed neatly into a large, cardboard box. I pull out the pink, pigskin boots and inspect them.

‘Never worn the things,’ she whispers so quietly that I have to move closer to hear her. ‘Never worn them,’ she repeats and I feel the warmth of her whisky-breath on my ear.

She steps back, yanking off her left pixie atrocity and pulling the boot on to her foot (simply leaving the pigskin to flap). ‘They were handmade in the nineteen fifties,’ she explains, ‘owned by a Frenchman, a showman. Maybe an actor. He was addicted to painkillers. Smell that…’

She offers me the second boot to sniff.

I point to my nose. ‘Blocked.’

‘Ah.’

She lounges against the arm of the sofa, holding her pigskinned foot out mournfully in front of her. ‘There must be over two hundred tiny pearl buttons.’