I’ve been thinking about winklepickers for weeks now and wondering when it was I first developed that longing for them that became all consuming. If I had only known that yearning would decades into the future lead to the painful problem I now have with my left foot would I have opted for more sensible footwear? I think not to be honest.
Looking back I blame Daphne Davis though of course she was quite unaware of her culpability. I first noticed those shoes of hers on the London-bound platform of Gravesend station in the mid 1950s. She wore them whilst waiting for the 9.05 train. I was of course late that morning because my train had traditionally always been the 8.10. They were the most extreme and shiny black winklepickers that I had yet witnessed on a foot – rather than in a magazine! Well she definitely didn’t come by them in Gravesend. Worn with her black duffel coat and armed with her copy of Bonjour Tristesse she looked sensational. To be totally honest I had for some years admired Daphne Davis rather more than she deserved and that all began when we both entered a speech competition at Wombwell Hall which she won with Abou Ben Adhem by Leigh Hunt. Elizabeth Johnstone came second and I’ve now quite forgotten her piece just as I’ve forgotten most other things about her except that she had dancing lessons in Northfleet High Street and was described as Fine Boned & Delicate by her mother to mine in the queue at Ripleys one morning.
I came third and my poem was The Song of the Little Hunter by Rudyard Kipling. Well it’s better than not being placed at all I suppose but oh how I hated that piece and re-reading it just a few minutes ago I’m still not overly keen. I’m not sure if we made the choices ourselves or if they were suggested by Miss K Smith but I cannot honestly believe she whose saintliness at the time was great would suggest that particularly ghastly piece for me. I would have done much, much better with Leigh Hunt – better than Daphne I’m not afraid to state but I won’t labour that point further. Suffice to say she won and I didn’t and from what I remember she didn’t even have any ambition to go on the stage whilst I of course did. In fact at that point in time I was at the very zenith of stage-struckness. It was all most frustrating especially when I considered that the only theatre I had ever set foot in was The Chatham Empire to see the annual pantomime some years previously. I think it was Mother Goose.
Anyway none of that matters very much because the point of all this is not the outcome of the Wombwell Hall speech competition and whether or not Miss K Smith made an error of judgement in the choices, but the winklepicker shoes. Despite the quite natural animosity I still held for Daphne I felt compelled to compliment her on them. Well, after all, I very much wanted to know where she’d bought them. She seemed slightly alarmed rather than hostile and said she had found them in a shop in Kings Road, Chelsea near where she now worked because now she had a simply fantastic job and she wasn’t required to start until ten am each day. She waxed lyrical about her new boss who was young and good looking and told her that he admired her style. It was quite difficult to bring her attention back to shoe shops but when I managed to she said it had sold theatrical footwear and her cousin had told her about it. It was a bit like that famous dance shop in Covent Garden. Her cousin had been considering buying some but she was after all saving up to get married and thought they were too expensive. Daphne was lucky because she waited for the sale.
Later I thought she must be referring to Anello & Davide founded as a theatrical footwear company in the 1920s and whose storefront in Drury Lane I stopped by regularly. I only found the place when I was doing one of my usual walk-pasts of London theatres and it was directly opposite the Theatre Royal. When you don’t have the opportunity to visit theatres all that frequently and they are after all going to be your future workplaces, you can at least walk past them. How on earth did Daphne Davis though, come by a cousin who frequented glamorous shoe shops? And was it possible that Anello & Davide had a branch in Chelsea which wasn’t a place I went to very often, mostly because there was no convenient tube stop. Second to my obsession with theatres that I did not venture into on a regular basis was my obsession with the London underground network which I did.
Daphne wanted to talk more about her new job but I asked how her sister was and she seemed to think it was an odd question. It wasn’t that odd as far as I was concerned and if Daphne had not won the speech competition I wouldn’t even be giving the sister whose name I’ve forgotten, a thought. The fact was that the sister and I had shared a boyfriend a year or so previously. His name was Donald and I cannot say that I was all that taken with him apart from the fact that he was quite posh in that he’d been to some minor public school in Sussex. He was to be honest just a bit dim but he had a sensationally good looking brother called John who I was hoping to attract at some stage. During our Sunday afternoon dates over a 1950s style cappuccino in the then very popular coffee bar in Harmer Street Donald rather unwisely confessed the details of his double life with Daphne’s sister. It was she he took to The Majestic on Saturday afternoons, never in the evening because he had to be home by ten. The other Davis Girl was the reason why he was never able to meet with me on Saturdays! To say I felt affronted is an understatement and even after all these years I still feel just a tinsy bit injured considering the facts of the situation. I mean – how could he?
Daphne’s success via Leigh Hunt meant that I quite naturally harboured a fair amount of resentment towards the entire Davis family – well you’re bound to aren’t you? However it is with some horror I now recall insisting that docile Donald make a choice between us and what’s more choose me. As he was extremely biddable he did so, even tolerating me standing over him whilst he told the poor girl that he was not going to turn up for their next date at The Majestic because he much preferred me. I felt I needed to be by his side just in case he told her some story about me being the daughter of his father’s bank manager whom he was compelled to entertain because of a loan to pay off family gambling debts. That’s what I would have done myself had I been Donald, but of course I wasn’t.
She looked startled, quite confused and annoyingly quite a lot like her sister. She’d probably also be a speech competition winner given half a chance. Nevertheless I often wondered what she actually made of it all though of course under the circumstances I was doing her a favour – who would want a boyfriend like Donald?
But to get back to Daphne that particular day as we waited together for the 9.05. When my mind drifted back to her she was talking about her black duffel coat yet another Kings Road, Chelsea purchase she told me. I said she looked terrific and asked if the book came from the Kings Road too but she said no, she’d bought it in Foyles in Charing Cross Road. I wanted to ask if she’d actually read it but thought that might be impolite so I didn’t.
