Winner: ‘Mr. Stenworthy’s Slippers’ by Madeleine D’Arcy

Once upon a time, when I was young, I left home. I had to get away. Away from the dole office. Away from the cold, wet, bare fields of County Clare. Away from the smell of damp and the sound of the North Atlantic Ocean. Away from a place where everyone knew everyone else and passed most of their time praying or bitching about each other.

         My boyfriend Lorcan moved to London first, because he aimed to become a world-famous rock musician. He spent most of his first two months ringing me up at all hours, crying down the phone, speeding out of his head and begging me to come over.

         ‘I need ya, Patsy,’ he would whine, from a call box somewhere in Willesden.

         So I finished my finals and off I went. There wasn’t much to keep me.

I got a job as an ‘admin’ assistant in an office in Muswell Hill. It was a real job, not just for the summer. The pay was lousy. My college degree didn’t seem to count. Some of the people I worked with could barely spell, but they treated me like a moron, anyway.

It was lonely in London. Every time I opened my mouth on the bus or on the tube, people would look at me as if I had a few pounds of Semtex in my pocket. I began to disguise my accent, even in the Paki shop down the road.

         Those Indians. I swear to God you’d think they’d be nice to us Irish, seeing as the English hated them, too. But no, they looked at me like I was an alcoholic every time I went in to buy beer or cider. And when the bundle of Evening Standards they kept on the counter screamed another headline about IRA bombs, I could feel them looking sideways at me, as if to say, ‘That’s your bloody crowd again, making it worse for all of us.’ Like it was my fault.

My twentieth birthday was spent in The Pig and Whistle in Finsbury Park with Lorcan and his friend Andy, the bass player. Other guys they knew showed up later, with an Aussie girl who apparently played guitar, and a few groupie girls with blue-black hair, Kohl-rimmed eyes and studded belts. I was buying too many rounds of drinks because Lorcan wasn’t.

         No one had put music on the jukebox so I went to check it out. While pondering the choices, I glanced over at Lorcan and his gang, and that’s when I felt really strange, as if I was watching TV and suddenly the voices didn’t match the mouths of the actors. It was an odd feeling. Not what you’d call ‘Road to Damascus’ stuff; just a sudden realisation that Lorcan and his lot were posers. When you were with them you could laugh at some stuff, but you couldn’t laugh at other stuff. It depended on what the gang thought was cool. I put ‘Good Times’ by Chic on the jukebox, and wished I felt like dancing.

The next day was Monday and I had a ferocious hangover. When I got to the office, I could have cried. Big Monica, the Chief Administrator, was on the phone talking to her friend and drinking weak tea. A pile of brown folders lay on my desk, with a handwritten note of instruction. Another day in a life I’d never wanted lay ahead, listening to second-hand conversations and writing formal letters to people I’d never know.

I skipped out at lunchtime to get some fresh air, and I decided to visit the shoe shop across the road. I couldn’t afford new shoes but I liked to try them on. The shop did shoe repairs too, but I didn’t own any worth repairing.

         As I was about to go in, I noticed an unusual man walking towards me, carrying a pair of lime-green slippers in one hand. He wore a big tweedy coat, all mossy green and mustard colours, and the kind of hat Sherlock Holmes wore on the telly. He was old – he might have been forty, or even fifty – but he walked in what books call a ‘sprightly fashion’.

         As I entered the shop, the man with the slippers followed me. He raised his hat politely to the lady with solid-looking hair who sat behind the counter, and his ginger moustache and beard made me think of wizards.

         ‘Dear lady,’ he boomed affably. ‘Can you sole my shoes?’

         ‘Certainly, sir,’ she said. ‘Will Friday be awright?’ Her nails were carefully varnished in a pink shade I wouldn’t have chosen myself.

         ‘Well, who can say?’ he beamed. ‘I sincerely hope that Friday will be most excellent.’

         He had to be an actor. He had that ‘Act-ooooor’ type of voice. I wondered if his hat was called a deerstalker and if it was, in what way it could possibly be useful for stalking deer. He took off his shoes, handed them to the solid-haired lady and put on his slippers. Then he noticed me.

         ‘Oh sorry,’ I said. ‘I was just admiring your hat.’

         ‘Aah,’ he said. ‘An Irish colleen. Maureen, no doubt. Or maybe Kathleen?’

         I explained politely that not all Irish girls were called Maureen or Kathleen. He told me that I had the most beautiful accent in the world. I said his accent was nice too.

         While the shop lady wrote out a yellow docket we continued to chat. For some reason, the conversation turned to dance.

         ‘Do you dance?’ he asked. ‘You know… that very lovely dance people do in Ireland? When you stand straight like a stick and only move your feet?’

         ‘I do,’ I said. ‘I’ve won medals for dancing.’ And, maybe because we were in a shoe shop, I found myself describing the soft shoes, a bit like ballet slippers, worn for reels and the black patent tap shoes with shiny buckles I used to wear to dance jigs and hornpipes.

         ‘How fascinating!’ he said. He was so enthusiastic he made me laugh. ‘Do you think you could possibly…?’

         ‘I will,’ I said, surprising myself. I launched off like Concorde down the strip of lino near the shop mirrors and danced the only jig I could remember:

Batter batter hop toe and toe jump kick jump kick

batter batter hop back batter batter hop back

batter one two three one two three one two three stamp toe toe

batter toe batter toe batter hop back.

         ‘Bravo!’ My new friend applauded wildly. ‘Hurraaaaw! Encore, encore!’

         I laughed so much I hardly noticed the stricken look on the shop lady’s face.

         ‘And do all your family dance?’ he asked.

         ‘My Dad... My Dad was a champion dancer. He taught me.’ I didn’t add that since Dad died I hadn’t been able to bear the diddley-eye of the dance tunes; that even the “come-all-ye” music in the smoky pubs down Kilburn way made me unreasonably angry inside.

         ‘And does your mother dance?’ the man with the slippers wondered.

         ‘Well, she’s more of a waltz-type person.’

         ‘Ah, the waltz,’ he said. ‘In honour of your Mama, let us now dance the waltz.’

         So we did. We wafted and glided around the small shop, he in his slippers and me in my dull office shoes. I can’t remember if he was humming the music or if I was or if we were waltzing in silence, both listening to the same imaginary tune. What I do remember is that his coat had a comforting, slightly musty smell, and that, for a few minutes, everything whirled away in a distant mist; the job, the heavy lonesomeness, the shop, the lady behind the counter, all forgotten.

         But then I bumped against a footrest and remembered where I was.

         ‘I must go back to work,’ I said, and detached myself sadly from the huge gingery comfort zone. He held the door open for me and doffed his hat, before padding slowly down the street in his slippers.

On my way home that evening, I dozed on the top deck of the 144 bus. In my dream Dad was alive, teaching me the ‘swing’ in our kitchen back home, spinning me round like one of those Chair-o-Planes at the Fun Fair, until I almost flew away… I was smiling when the bus lurched me awake.

         Then I remembered my new English friend and began to worry. What was the deal with the slippers? Did he possess only one pair of shoes? What if it started to rain? His slippers would get all soggy. He had to wait until Friday for his shoes. How would he manage?

         When I got back to the flat I shared with Lorcan, he and Andy were jamming and drinking cans in the front room. I told them about my dance in the shoe shop.

         ‘Do you ever stop making a show of yourself?’ said Lorcan.

         Andy was really enthused though. ‘I bet that geezer was Viv Stenworthy! It sounds like him. He lives in Muswell Hill.’

         ‘Huh?’ said Lorcan.

         ‘You must remember Viv Stenworthy. He was in the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. He’s ultra-famous.’

         I was impressed that Andy was impressed, but I had no idea who he meant.

         ‘He did loads of interesting stuff, back in the day,’ said Andy. ‘He’s one of my all-time heroes.’

         ‘Never heard of him,’ said Lorcan.

Next day I went back to the shoe shop.

         ‘You again?’ said the lady with the well-set hair. ‘What ya gonna do this time, the Nutcracka’ Sweet?’

         ‘Umm, sorry about that, I didn’t mean to …’

         ‘Don’t worry, dawlin’. Brightened up the day, it did.’ And then she smiled. And yes, she said. My dancing partner was indeed the famous Vivian Stenworthy.

Lorcan was going home. He’d lost another job – time-keeping issues, apparently. There was no sign of the recording contract. He rang his parents for money again but they finally lost patience and sent him a one-way ticket home on Slattery’s Bus instead.

We were over, anyway, Lorcan and me. I’d made that clear (very loudly) the night I found him with the Aussie girl in the men’s toilets at the Marquee Club. It was strange that as soon as I’d arrived in London he’d gotten all of his old confidence back but I’d begun to lose the scraps I’d had. Being with him was nothing like I imagined it would be. I wondered if this was what happened to all couples sooner or later and if it was fortunate that it had happened to me and Lorcan earlier than most.

I didn’t want to go home. My mother had married again – soon after Dad died – to a younger man. Donie Duggan was full of health and good humour but I couldn’t get used to him being there. It was clear, too, that neither Donie nor Mam could see what I did – the shadow of my father, standing at the back door, looking out at the rain, an old cardigan over his striped pajamas, worn brown slippers on his feet, smoking a fag and listening to the laughter of the living.

I found a room in a shared house in Turnpike Lane and on moving day I stood in the front room of the flat for the last time, with a rucksack on my back and a holdall in one hand. I was wearing two coats and already felt far too hot. Lorcan was sitting on the couch next to his bags, strumming his guitar and waiting for the estate agent.

‘Well,’ I said. ‘Here’s my key. Have a safe trip home.’

He looked up at me in an accusatory kind of way.

‘You know that famous fellah you did the Irish dancing for?’ he said. ‘I heard he’s always taking the piss out of people.’

‘Mr. Stenworthy? He seemed really nice.’

‘He was only making a mockery of you.’

‘Oh,’ I said. I felt hideously foolish.

He threw in a last comment, like a scrap to a dog. ‘I’m only telling you for your own good. You’d need to cop on, especially now you’re on your own.’

I met Mr. Stenworthy again about a week later. I’d finished work for the day and I was feeling like a small ship bobbing around on a very big sea. I kept thinking I saw Dad coming out of William Hill’s betting shop, or smoking cigarettes outside the kebab shop with the Turkish lads. I even missed Lorcan though he’d turned out to be such a rat. I’m just a bit run-down, I told myself. I need to detox. So I trotted off to buy some vegetables.

Harvey’s the Greengrocer was just down the road from the office. I liked the shop a lot even though there was no Mr. Harvey, only a Mr. Hussein and lots of Hussein relatives, and this had caused me some confusion, at first. Pallets of fruit and vegetables sat at a tilt on rough wooden tables outside the shop: lemons straight from Cyprus; strange stuff like yams and sweet potatoes; bunches of coriander, parsley, basil and thyme. There was a box of long tuberous-looking red-skinned vegetables too – the ones that looked like Kerr’s Pink potatoes gone horribly wrong. (I kept meaning to ask someone what they were and how to cook them but there never seemed to be a right time; the Husseins were always busy.)

I bought root ginger, garlic, and some vegetables for a stir-fry. As I loitered around the fruit section, wondering if I should get kumquats or a pomegranate because I’d never had either before, I bumped into Mr. Stenworthy, who was paying for a lemon. He was wearing the same deerstalker hat as before (well, the hat I thought might be a deerstalker), this time teamed with a voluminous green cape.

         ‘How’s it going, Mr. Stenworthy?’ I said.

         He doffed his hat to me in that nice old-fashioned way of his. I wished, for a moment, that I was wearing a hat myself, so that I could doff mine back at him.

         ‘How is the princess of the Irish dance, this fine morn?’ he boomed, in his radio voice, but when I looked into his eyes he seemed a bit shy.

         ‘I’m grand… well, I’m ok,’ I lied.

         I felt shy too. I knew he was famous now. And he knew I knew. And I knew he knew I knew, if you get my drift. It changed things.

         Suddenly, Lorcan’s words came into my head and I became convinced that this famous man had made a fool of me. I couldn’t let it go. I had to ask him.

         ‘Mr. Stenworthy,’ I said, bravely. ‘About that Irish dancing… Well, it was a bit daft, really, wasn’t it?’

             ‘Good gracious, no!’ he said, looking surprised. ‘Your dance was superb and a triumph. I adored your performance.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Thank goodness. I didn’t mean to doubt you.’

‘My dear, you are a very fine member of the human race and I salute you.’ He did, in a fine military style.

I laughed because he was so over-blown about me and though I didn’t take it too seriously I sort of danced home, all the same.

The last time I met Mr. Stenworthy, I was a teensy bit drunk. I’d found a new job and my ‘leaving do’ in Muswell Hill had started at lunchtime. At about 5 pm I hugged everyone and said I’d miss them, which was a disgraceful lie. By 7 pm Big Monica was in a condition she called ‘rat-arsed’ and insisted I come to the ladies with her where she confided that she couldn’t seem to keep a bloke and then threw up. At that point I passed the care of Big Monica to her deputy and left.

As I waited for the bus, I spotted Mr. Stenworthy shuffling out of the off-licence with a plastic bag. This time he wore a chocolate-brown fur hat that reminded me of Aloysius, my own brown teddy bear.

I waved at him and he waved back and smiled, so I dashed up to him.

‘Mr. Stenworthy,’ I said. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m in the pink, young lady,’ he proclaimed, amiably, and walked on by.

As I watched him walk away I noticed he was wearing a blue slipper on one foot and a lime-green one on the other. And next to him I saw my Dad, ambling down the street, but when he turned to enter the off-licence I saw the side of his face and it wasn’t Dad at all…

Confused, I looked ahead again just as Mr. Stenworthy turned the corner and disappeared. That’s when I got the most awful desolate feeling that I might never see him again either – that he could die, just like Dad, just like that – so I shouted ‘Stop!’ and ran and reached him and threw myself upon him and hugged him really tight and smelt the comforting musty smell of his coat, and I was so out of breath I couldn’t speak.

When I finally released him and looked up, Mr. Stenworthy was staring down at me, looking quite shocked.

‘My dear young lady,’ he said. ‘Steady on.’

I felt mortified. Lorcan was right. I was always making a show of myself.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Just…thanks for dancing with me and being so nice.’

‘Oh,’ Mr. Stenworthy said. He stood there for a moment, and blinked a couple of times.

‘Old fools should never give advice to bright young things,’ he pronounced, finally. ‘But I intend to make an exception. Never forget to dance, particularly in inappropriate places.’

And off he shambled, down the street, in his mismatched slippers, the bottles clinking gently in his plastic bag. That was the last time I saw him.

Many years later, I realised that, at the time, Mr. Stenworthy might have been just as lonely as me.