Elegance and Innocence: 2-Book Collection

The walls are lined with portraits – Picasso, Coco Chanel, Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant – rows and rows of meticulous, glamorous faces. The eyes are darker, more penetrating than normal eyes, the noses straighter, more refined. I allow myself to slip into a sort of meditative state, a spell brought on by witnessing such an excess of beauty.

And then I spot a portrait I don’t recognize, a woman with gleaming dark hair, parted in the middle and arranged in a mass of black curls around her face. Her features are distinctive; high cheekbones, a Cupid’s-bow mouth and very black, intelligent eyes. Leaning forward, with her cheek lightly resting against her hand, she looks as if we’ve happened to catch her in the middle of the most engaging conversation of her life. Her dress, a simple bias-cut sheath, is made from a light satin that shimmers against the dull material of the settee and her only jewellery is a single strand of perfectly matched pearls. She’s not the most famous face or even the most attractive, but for some reason she’s undoubtedly the most compelling. I get up and cross the room. The name reads: Genevieve Dariaux, Paris, 1934.

However, my solitude is brief.

‘There you are! Mona’s sent us to find you.’ Penny comes strolling in on the arm of my reluctant husband.

Stay calm, I remind myself, taking a much-needed gulp of my champagne. ‘Hello, Penny, just enjoying the exhibition.’

She leans forward and waggles a finger in my face.

‘You know, Louise, you’re very, very naughty!’ She winks at my husband. ‘I don’t know how you can let her drink! You’re both as bad as each other!’

My husband and I exchange looks. Come again?

She leans in further and drops her voice to a stage whisper. ‘I must say, you look amazing! And this,’ she continues, feeling the fabric of my dress gingerly between her thumb and forefinger, ‘this really isn’t too bad at all. I mean, most of them look like absolute tents but this one’s really quite cute. My daughter’s due in May and she’s desperate for something like this that she can just pad about in.’

I feel the blood draining away from my head.

She smiles at both of us. ‘You must be soooooooooooo pleased!’

I swallow hard. ‘I’m not pregnant.’

She wrinkles her brow in confusion. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘I am not pregnant,’ I repeat, louder this time.

My husband laughs nervously. ‘You’ll be the first to know when she is, I can assure you!’

‘No, I think I will,’ I say, and he laughs again, slightly hysterical now.

Penny continues to gape at me in amazement. ‘But that dress … I’m sorry, I mean, it’s just …’

I turn to my husband. ‘Honey?’

He seems to have found a point of fascination on the floor. ‘Humm?’

‘Potato.’

I don’t know what I thought he’d do, defend me somehow or at least look sympathetic. But instead he continues to stare at his shoes.

‘OK.’

I turn and walk away. I feel like I’m having an out-of-body experience but somehow manage to gain the safety of the 1oo. A couple of girls are fixing their make-up as I enter, so I make a beeline for an empty stall and lock the door. I wait, with my back pressed against the cool metal and close my eyes. No one ever died of humiliation, I remind myself. If that were true, I’d have been dead years ago.

Finally, they leave. I unlock the door and stand in front of the mirror. Like any normal woman, I look in the mirror every day, when I brush my teeth or wash my face or comb my hair. It’s just I tend to look at myself in pieces and avoid joining them all up together. I don’t know why; it just feels safer that way.

But tonight I force myself to look at the whole thing. And suddenly I see how the bits and pieces add up to someone I’m not familiar with, someone I never intended to be.

My hair needs a trim and I should really dye it to get rid of those prematurely grey strands. Incredibly fine and ashen coloured, it drapes listlessly around my head, forced to one side by a faux tortoiseshell clip. My face, always pale, is unnaturally white. Not ivory or alabaster but rather devoid of any colour at all, like some deep sea animal that’s never encountered the sun. Against it, the bright red smear of lipstick I’ve applied seems garish and my mouth far too big – like a gaping, scarlet gash across the bottom third of my face. The heat of the crowd has made me sweat; my nose is glistening, my cheeks are shiny and flushed but I haven’t any powder.

And my favourite dress, despite being dry cleaned, has gone hopelessly bobbly and is, now that we’re being honest, shapeless in a way that was fashionable five years ago, though definitely out of style now. I remember feeling sexy and confident in it when it used to just skim the contours of my figure, suggesting a sylph-like sensuality. Now that I’m ten pounds heavier, the effect is not the same. To finish it all off, my shoes, a pair of practical, flat Mary Janes with Velcro fastenings, make my ankles look like two thick tree trunks. Faded and scuffed, they’re everyday shoes, at least two years old, and really too worn to be seen anywhere but inside my own house.

I’m forced to conclude that the whole effect does rather shout, ‘Pregnant woman’. Or, more precisely, ‘This is the best I can do under the circumstances.’

I stare at my reflection in alarm. No, this person isn’t really me. It’s all just a terrible mistake – a Bermuda Triangle of Bad Hair day meets Bad Dress day, meets Hippie Shoes from Hell. I need to calm down, centre myself.

I try an experiment.

‘Hi, my name’s Louise Canova. I’m thirty-two years old and I’m not pregnant.’

My voice echoes around the empty loo.

This isn’t working. My heart is pounding and I’m starting to panic. I close my eyes and will myself to concentrate, to think positive thoughts, but instead the images of a thousand glossy black and white faces crowd my mind. It’s like I’m not even of the same species.

Suddenly the door behind me opens and Mona walks in.

Triple fucking potato.

She leans dramatically against the basin. ‘Louise, I’ve just heard. Listen, she didn’t mean anything, I’m sure, and besides, she’s blind as a bat.’

Why does he have to tell her everything?

‘Thanks, Mona, I appreciate it.’

‘Still,’ she comes up behind me and pushes my hair back from my face with two carefully manicured fingers, ‘if you like, I could give you the name of my hairdresser, he’s really very reasonable.’

My husband is waiting when I come out. He hands me my coat and we leave the party in silence, finding ourselves standing in the same spot in Trafalgar Square less than thirty minutes after we arrived. Scanning the street for any sign of a cab, he takes a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and lights one.

‘What are you doing?’ I ask.

‘Smoking,’ he says. (My husband doesn’t smoke.)

I leave it.

The yellow light of a cab lurches towards us from a distance and I wave wildly at it. It’s misting now. The cab slows down and we get in. My husband throws himself heavily against the back seat then leans forward again to pull down the window.

Suddenly I want to make him laugh, to cuddle him, or rather to be cuddled. After all, what does it matter what I look like or what anyone else thinks? He still loves me. I reach over and put my hand over his.

‘Sweetheart? Do you … do you really think I look OK?’

He takes my hand and gives it a squeeze. ‘Listen, Pumpkin, you look just fine. Exactly the way you always do. Don’t pay any attention to her. She’s probably just jealous because you’re young and married.’

‘Yes,’ I agree hollowly, though it’s not quite the effusive sea of compliments I’d hoped for.

He squeezes my hand again and kisses my forehead. ‘Besides, you know I don’t care about all that rubbish.’

The cab speeds on into the darkness and as I sit there, with the cold wind blowing against my face, a single, violent thought occurs to me.