#2024MakeAMonster Day 8: Shoe

 

#2024makeamonster day 8! Today's prompt: SHOE.

Shoe

My Granddad never helped around the house. 'A man needs his rest,' he'd say, and go off to toast his slippers.

I always wanted Granny to stand up to him, but she wasn't as strong as she used to be. I'd seen the photos, and back in her day she'd been a dancer. She was beautiful then, or if not pretty-featured then something better: strong and graceful with a face like a lioness and legs she could lift all the way up to her cheek, pointing a powerful foot towards the sky as if her whole body was bearing a torch. She still had something of that leonine face - 'good bones', my mother said, who was her daughter-in-law and assured me I'd inherited Granny's looks, though perhaps I thought of her that way because the picture was of her dancing La Lionesse, her favourite role back in the day. But even with her face still regal, her legs weren't the miracles they'd once been. An injury had weakened her right knee, and her back hurt most days. She didn't like to admit it, though; the most she'd admit was that she was tired.

'What have you to be tired about?' Granddad would ask. It offended him because he'd never really retired: he'd been a tutor for college students all his life and he was still doing it, marking papers, giving stern instructions down the phone, and generally telling everyone that he was disappointed in them. From what I could see it didn't tire him that much, or not enough that he stopped doing it at the dinner table: anything Dad said about the state of the world was a sign of mental slackness, and anything Dad said about his job was further proof that he was a disappointment for sinking to the level of a mere Deputy Head of a primary school, a place of play-doh and dumbed-down history and trophies for participation according to Granddad, who never forgave Dad for giving me a sticker chart to reward me for doing the washing up. Faulting everyone's thinking was something he slipped into as comfortably as he donned those old slippers of his, and his health depended on doing both as often as possible.

So it was Granny who did all the cooking. Granddad had views on healthy eating and expected a lot of chopped vegetables, and if she sat to chop them he'd demand to know what she had to be tired about, so she stood on her 'tired' legs, leaning on the counter with her worn hands more and more as the piles of carrot and courgette rose and the pain in her back rose with them.

Mum loved Granny and hated to see Granny chopping before the meals and washing up after them while Granddad toasted his slipper-soles. Dad said he agreed, but that if we started a fight about it then Granddad would only carry it on with Granny after we left, and it had always been this way. So we went round every Saturday and Sunday; Mum and I helped cook and Dad helped wash up, and Granny tried to cook my favourite meals until Granddad had something to say about the endless array of potatoes and how apparently we were making amends for the Famine. Mum was Irish, which Granddad seemed to think she did on purpose, and once the new routine began he couldn't settle at his cosy fire until he'd held her accountable for the environmental havoc wrought by turf-burners, or exposed the gaps in her knowledge on the finer points of leprechaun lore, observing that the greatest contribution of her nation to rightful thinking was that the most magical creature in the world was indeed a good shoe-maker.

Granddad was a devotee of his slippers, but Dad wanted to make Granny more comfortable without getting her into trouble. He had the idea that if we could get her some supportive shoes it might make it a little easier for her to stand, at least, but contriving an occasion where she was allowed to leave the house without Granddad, even under the excuse of 'getting us all out of his way while he worked,' was something Granddad didn't allow.

So the time we were able to manage it, it was just before Granddad's birthday and we told him we needed to shop for him. He accepted that, and Mum had a crafty idea: we could get him a new pair of slippers on the very accurate grounds that slippers were the deepest expression of his life, and while we were in the shoe shop we could get Granny fitted with something supportive and tell Granddad it was just something we picked up on sale.

There were several shoe-shops along the main road, but it was a Saturday and they were pretty busy. Granny said determinedly that she'd go in, but we could see through the windows that all the seats were occupied, and Dad wasn't about to take her anywhere she couldn't sit down. So we turned down a side-street and found a small place that, from the outside, was not very noticeable - the sign was faded and the lettering so curlicued you couldn't really tell what it was supposed to be saying, and the light inside was dim gold with none of the fluorescence that the chains used to give you the sense that clean socks and spiffy deodorizers were spilling their refreshment out into the street. But it was stacked high with shoeboxes, and there were some seats to be had, nice green padded ones, so we all went in.

The man serving behind the counter greeted us with a bit of a courtly bow and said, 'Good morning to a lovely family.' He had a kind of old-world accent - Shakespearean, you might say; the bow was theatrical and for a moment I saw a proscenium of countertop and shoelace shelves.

Dad was used to being a bit playful with the kids at his school, so he bowed back and said, 'What a pleasure, sir.'

The man grinned in pure delight. Then he saw Granny, and his eyes went wide - bright blue eyes that spilled a kind of cleanliness around themselves. 'It's never Edith Farraday!' he exclaimed. 'La Lionesse!'

Granny had sat herself down, but at the greeting she started to stand, automatic manners before the man ushered himself forward saying, 'Please, please, good madam, do keep your seat. Ah, you were a marvel of movement, Miss Farraday, a true practitioner. I can't say when I've had such pleasure as I had when I saw you work your magic.'

It had been a long time since Granny danced, but she drew herself up on her seat. It was as if the recognition was lifting her spine, a gentle hand stroking it into alignment. 'What a very kind thing to say,' she said. 'Have we met, sir?'

'Ah, I'm only what you'd call an admirer,' the man said. 'I always did have a love for the casting of a true spell.'

'Well,' Granny said, smiling with real grace, 'any pleasure I gave, we owe to the craft. I'll never be that again, but I was glad, for a while, to serve it.'

At that the man looked at her sharper than ever. 'Madam, we never cease to be what we are. Not if we live a thousand years.'

Granny looked saddened then, and Dad stepped in, saying, 'Sir, I hope you can help us today. We want high-end slippers for an elderly man, and we were hoping to find something comfortable for my mother with good support. She has pains in her knee and back, you see.'

The man turned his gaze on Granny, who was sinking back now, the light going out of her eyes. 'I do see,' he said. 'Well, well. This won't do.'

He couldn't do enough for us after that. He conjured up a lollypop for me out of somewhere or other, and another for Mum; he only didn't give any to Dad or Granny because they said they hadn't the sweet tooth. Mum and I sat with our wild-mint lollies while the man held Granny's feet in his hands, coaxing and questioning and gently drawing from her admissions of pain that she'd held in all this time, and though his face was wizened as a walnut, when he bounded up to search for shoes, he was as spring-heeled as twenty.

The first pair they tried on Granny said that yes, in fact these felt quite a bit better. Her knee was nicely balanced now.

'Ah, Madam,' he said, 'it does rejoice me to hear that. But I do believe I can do better.'

The next pair, Granny actually walked around the shop a few laps. 'These are very nice,' she said. 'I can feel the alignment.'

'Ah, Madam,' he said, 'you remain enchanting. But I believe I can do better.'

The last pair, Granny stood quite still. She stood like a dancer, and when she met his eyes, she smiled. 'How much are they?' she said softly.

'To you, Madam? I couldn't charge a copper coin. No, Miss Farraday, I won't hear a word. The pleasure you gave me when I watched you dance is something I've ached to repay. There are few joys in life as sweet as paying out what's owed.'

'Well,' Dad said, almost guilty, 'that's - extremely generous of you, sir. I hope you'll let us buy some expensive slippers for my father to make good.'

'Ah, sir,' the man said, turning his bright eyes on Dad. 'I think I have just the thing.'

'He's a size ten,' Dad said, 'and he favours sheepskin.'

The man didn't turn as he reached down a box. 'Ah, sir,' he said, 'I believe I can do better.'

The slippers we bought for Granddad were unimpeachable: sturdy-soled with arch support, fine lambs-fur interiors and a kind of pointed elegance at the toes. You could imagine them being worn at some exclusive club on the Strand, deep in the upstairs smoking rooms where women and non-members were not allowed to go. There was no way he could find a reason to fault them.

'Are they sustainably produced, by any chance?' Mum asked.

The man bowed again. 'A woman of conscience is a flower upon the face of the earth,' he said. 'And yes, yes indeed they are. I can assure you they cost nothing the world cannot afford to spare.'

Granddad was satisfied when we gave him the slippers. 'Not original,' he said, 'but accurate in your observations of my habits, so I suppose I mustn't consider it too great an insult. You are on target, my son, I'll admit that.'

Granny smiled. She was moving a little easier in her new shoes, which we'd told Granddad we'd bought cheap and hadn't mentioned the shoe-seller's compliments because Granddad didn't like it when anyone admired Granny too much. He felt it a kind of criticism of himself and was moved to criticise back.

The next weekend when we went back, Granddad was toasting his new slippers before the fire. 'Are you familiar with the biographical origins of Hans Christian Andersen's red-shoes fairytale?' he quizzed my dad. 'I could swear your mother was near such madness. I caught her tapping her foot to music the other day. Then again, a man so in love with the unattainable hadn't much to teach the world.'

When it was time for lunch, though, Granddad said he felt tired and didn't want to come to the table. Edie should bring his food through.

It was odd. Granddad was normally very proper about sitting up and minding your elbows and not lolling around like savages.

We came back the next day and Granddad was still before the fire. He was on the phone, berating a student for sloppy thinking; 'All I hear is bleating,' he said. He leaned down and scratched his legs; the hair on them was whiter than the hair on his head.

'Do you think,' Mum asked Dad that week, 'that your father might be getting a little fragile? I do hope not for Edie's sake.'

Dad sighed. 'He'd never go into a home,' he said. 'I think he'd die first.'

'She'd die waiting on him, more like,' Mum said. 'I wish we could have her to live with us.'

'I know, love,' Dad said. 'We'd all like that, but you know my father. He's not to be moved.'

But it was strange: the next Saturday we went to see them, and Granddad's voice was getting a little weak. It had a kind of quaver to it, even as he said that a man needed his rest and must we be bothering him about his house every weekend?

'Never mind,' Granny said, putting her arm around my shoulders. 'I've made a shepherd's pie for you, darling. Let's go enjoy it.'

'Endless potatoes again, I see,' Granddad said. His voice really was a bit wobbly. 'The lamp in the spine does not light on cottage pie.'

'No, dear,' Granny said, balanced graceful on her feet. 'Shepherd's.'

He started to fail quickly after that. Every day we saw him, he seemed to get thinner; it was an odd kind of thinness, starting at his ankles and creeping up. His arms got lost within his sleeves, thin as sticks, and his hands started to cramp up as well; they were knotted as hooves and he couldn't unbend them. He couldn't even shave, which he'd always been punctilious as a soldier about; his face was buried in white curls.

Granny, though, was looking wonderful. She didn't run about - 'At my age you can't expect it,' she said cheerfully - but her pain was mostly gone. More than that, she'd grown stronger in herself somehow; the music had come back into her gestures, and she held her head poised on her neck as if she might, at any moment, leap. She even decided one weekend that she'd like us to take her to the hairdresser for some highlights. 'I could do with a little touching-up in my crowning glory,' she said, laughing and stroking my cheek. 'Let's make it a girl's day, eh sweetheart?'

We went into town and got our hair done. She even supported me when I said I felt brave enough to try a pixie cut: 'You've got those beautiful cat eyes,' she told me. 'Runs in the family. You'll look perfect, darling.' I felt great with my hair fluffed up around my face, light and springy, ready to dance myself. And Granny looked beautiful. Her hair was a pure gold mane around her face.

When we got back Granddad was shakily angry that we'd been gone so long. 'Useless,' he said. 'Useless bitch.'

I was shocked, though Dad just patted my shoulder and said to Mum, 'Take her out to the garden, why don't you?', and from the sound of his voice I knew it wasn't anything he hadn't heard before.

But Granny stepped up to him, and she was tall. 'Now don't bleat, dear,' she said.

'You useless, selfish bitch,' Granddad said.

Granny said to him, 'Do you know, my dear? I think I've had enough.' And she reached down and, with a single swipe, whipped the slippers off his feet.

His skin came away with them.

I saw it like a glove splitting. His scalp snapped apart and peeled down, a soft slithering that ripped meat away itself, and in an instant the room smelled of butchery. The pink tang of flesh in the air, and under it, the heat of musk.

Mum screamed, but Granny smiled at her and looked at the withered wet sack dangling from her hand. It was laced with veins, still pulsing; it was the colour of a man. She thought for just a minute before, with a flick of her wrist, she tossed it onto the fire.

The a human voice rose screaming rose from the coals, thin and tiny like the escape of steam, and once it was spent it was very quiet. There was nothing left in the chair but - what? A bundle of hair. A withered, knotted thing, narrow-legged and white-faced and covered over with curlicues. All the blood had gone into the fire with Granddad's skin, and what was left was bleating and shaking in the chair.

The sheepskin shoes withered on the coals. Granny nodded at them in satisfaction.

'It's all right, darling,' she said to Dad, patting him with her smeared hand. 'It was very kind of you to want me to come live with you, but I think we'll do quite well together now. Perhaps it's time for the lamb to lie down for the lion.'