Elegance and Innocence: 2-Book Collection

I’ve never been to the Ritz

The days pass and I hear nothing.

Nothing at all.

I Ideal Wardrobe (#ulink_7c35ba2c-90fe-5c92-9958-97ddafdc8409)

For an Elegant Woman:

9 am. Tweed skirts in the brown autumn shades and harmonizing sweaters, worn under a fur coat of one of the casual varieties. Brown shoes with medium heels and a capacious brown alligator bag. (A really elegant woman never wears black in the morning.)

1 pm.A fur-trimmed suit in a plain colour (neither brown nor black) and a matching fur hat. Underneath the jacket, a harmonizing sweater, jersey blouse, or sleeveless dress.

3 pm.A wool dress in a becoming shade that matches or contrasts with: A pretty town coat in a vivid colour.

6 pm.A black wool dress, not very décolleté. It will take you everywhere, from the bistro to the theatre, stopping en route for all the informal dinner parties on your social calendar.

7 pm.A black crêpe dress, this one quite décolleté, for more formal dinners and more elegant restaurants. A white mink hat.

8 pm.A matching coat and dress that is called a ‘cocktail ensemble’ in Paris, but in reality is often far too dressy for the occasion, although perfect for theatre first nights and elegant black-tie dinner parties.

10 pm.A long formal evening dress that can be worn all the year round (which means you should avoid velvet and prints).

9 am and I’m at the top of Whitehall, wearing a navy gabardine suit, with a brown V-necked knitted top from Kookai and a pair of black T-bar shoes. The Kookai top is beautifully form fitting but has a tendency to unravel under the arms. Must remember to keep my jacket on. Am popping into Sushi Express for my breakfast – a fruit smoothie and an order of green tea to take away. Part of my new regime. I will not eat sugar today. I will not. I buy an extra banana, just in case. The sun is blinding as I race across the street to catch the light. I’m good at running in high-heeled shoes now – I have to be. I’ve been promoted to manager in the box office and spend all day running up and down the stairs between the window in the lobby and the office upstairs. A bit of a wild-card candidate for the job, no one was more surprised than I was when I got it. It’s been a huge boost to my self-confidence. And the constant activity is a godsend. My husband and I have, as far as I can tell, stopped talking. The new job makes it easier for us to pretend that we are too busy or just too tired to communicate. Neither of us is ready to hear what the other has to say.

1 pm and I’m in the changing room of the gym, along with about thirty other women, all of whom have only an hour to squeeze themselves into their lycra ensembles, work themselves up into a sweat, shower, dry their hair and tear back to the office. Since I renewed my membership several months ago, I’ve managed, miraculously, to show up four times a week. Not since my dancing days have I pursued any form of fitness with this much success. And it’s starting to show.

The gym locker room is also where you learn about the reality of other women’s bodies and wardrobes. We all spend as much time surreptitiously examining one another as we do on the treadmill. Everyone freezes simultaneously as the tall, tanned blonde emerges from the shower. We pretend to be adjusting our hair but really … yes! She does have cellulite!

Life is full of surprises. Who would’ve guessed that the newsreader with the Armani suit and the mobile phone attached to her ear (‘I’m at the gym! T-H-E G-Y-M!’), would wear dingy white M&S knickers with a black see-through bra? But the surprise transformation of the week goes to the mousy-haired, be-fringed girl in the 1984 Laura Ashley floral ensemble who undresses to reveal a bright pink silk bra and knicker set with matching garter belt, stockings and a pair of legs that would make Ute Lemper weep. Even the tall blonde stands agape in the centre of the shower room. I pull on a bright blue crop top, a matching pair of stretch trousers and some hideously expensive Nike trainers. I’m sure I burn more calories just trying to squeeze myself into this outfit than the whole workout put together.

3 pm and I’m back in the office, showered, hair not quite dry (competition for the three blow-dryers is fierce) and back in my navy suit. The only difference is, I’ve given up on my black T-bar shoes. There’s only so long a woman can be expected to bounce around on the balls of her feet before someone has to die. The temperature has shot up and my jacket is hanging over the back of my chair, leaving the unravelling Kookai top in full view. I will repair it. I will. Tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ll just get rid of this stray thread that’s hanging down … I watch with a strange sense of detachment as half the remaining sleeve comes undone in my hand.

I’m meant to be completing a weekly sales report but have hit my mid-afternoon slump. This is a biological glitch that renders me incredibly depressed between the hours of three and four o’clock each afternoon without fail. My theory is that I’m genetically programmed to have a nap at this time but unfortunately don’t live in a climate that favours siestas. The consequences are dramatic. The will to live seeps away and, instead of focusing on figures and performance breakdowns, I’m visualizing various methods of suicide. Dangling from a rope, passed out on a bed, floating in a stream. Or a drastic haircut.

The phone rings on the desk opposite, and as I scramble to get it, my foot catches on an invisible snag in the grey carpet tiles. My stocking runs and I still manage to miss the call. Luckily, Colin puts the kettle on (he’s intuitive in this area) and magicks up a box of Jammie Dodgers. (‘Two for the price of one, darling. Only slightly crushed.’) I desperately grapple for my spare emergency banana and find it at the bottom of my handbag, beaten into a kind of brown pulp. Fuck it. Spirits rise with the sugar intake and Colin assures me that Sinéad O’Connor was a fluke; that most women would be unable to successfully carry off a shaved head with any real sense of style. Unless they had ambitions of a professional wrestling career.

6 pm never fails to bring with it an inevitable second wind. The malaise that immersed the office at 4:45 – that hopeless hour when going home seems like a cruel, unsubstantiated rumour – evaporates and at 5:55 is replaced by a carnival atmosphere. There’s dancing, singing, the telling of jokes. Colleagues pat each other on the back and hold the door open for one another as they run, laughing and singing, out of the office. The night shift takes over, looking like they’ve just been sentenced to life imprisonment. I’ve got just over an hour to go home and get changed before I’m due at the theatre for the opening night of my husband’s new play. He’s having dinner after the show with his agent and the director and they expect me to be there, proud and supportive in my role as ‘the wife’. I feel a headache coming on just thinking about it. I decide to take off my stockings, as the run is just too bad for public display, and force my swollen feet back inside the T-bar shoes. On goes the jacket and I’m tearing out the door, flapping my way down Whitehall towards home.

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 (#ulink_b547e75b-9772-51c3-876d-66f3433b1826)

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 willevaporate 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.’