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It wasn’t all just corns and bunions –

Uh-uh

– No way.

Of course there was a certain amount of what a novice might term ‘the run-of-the-mill stuff’ (although for Elen, nothing was ever ‘run-of-the-mill’, because in her eyes every symptom – no matter how small or uncontentious – invariably belied a deeper cause, and uncovering something’s origin, its genesis, was an essential part of the challenge of good chiropody; part of that special, ‘transformative’ magic – the buzz, the voodoo – which made all the hard daily slog – the cancelled appointments, the stroppy clients, the crazy hygiene – feel absolutely worthwhile).

Take bandaging, for example. Elen just loved it. As a small girl she remembered painstakingly binding the limbs and the torsos of all her dolls and her teddies with neat strips of fabric cut from old handker-chiefs (almost mummifying them, in several cases). It was just like weaving (was artistic; provided her with a similar kind of primitive thrill), but there was always that fascinating hidden variable in her line of work – a particular kind of condition, a certain shape of instep or toe, a preferred type of shoe – which made each and every application into something fresh and stimulating.

And it wasn’t just the medical aspect. It was the mundane things, too. The chiropody minutiae: the pad, the splint, the plaster, the wedge, the gauze, the strapping, the brace, the stockingette –

Oh the smells –

And the whiteness –

Or – better still – the creamy-white –

The stretch, the non-stretch –

The earthy putty,

The sterilising tingle

The dizzy glue

Each item –

Oh, but look…

Aren’t they all just…just beautiful?

– tidily arranged inside her briefcase (or laid out in that neat, spotless provisions drawer at her usual room in the practice). Every object immaculately packaged; each box and label so plain and clinical, so severe and uncompromising, so unapologetically –

Uh…

– generic

That was it!

– and timeless, too: the future/the past, all painstakingly rolled up into one hugely reliable sanitary bundle.

Elen liked the clean (very much – of course she did – she had to), but she absolutely loved the dirty: the malformation, the bump, the crust, the fungus. To Elen a foot was like a city, an infection was the bad within, and she was its ombudsman; making arrangements, sorting out problems, instituting rules, offering warnings.

On a good day she was a Superman or a Wonderwoman, doggedly fighting foot-crime and the causes of foot-crime (usually – when all was finally said and done – the ill-fitting shoe…Okay, so it was hardly The Riddler, or The Penguin, but in a serious head-to-head between a violent encounter with either one of these two comic-book baddies and an eight-hour, minimum-wage shift behind the bar of a ‘happening’ Ashford night-spot with a corn the size of a quail’s egg throbbing away under the strappy section of your brand-new, knock-off Manolo Blahniks…Well…it’d be a pretty close call).

Elen firmly believed that she was making a difference.

She was nothing less than an evangelist for the foot. She was a passionate devotee. She worshipped at the altar of the arch and the heel.

Sometimes it wasn’t easy. The foot was hardly the most glamorous of the appendages (‘yer dogs’, ‘yer plates’, ‘yer hoofs’). No one really gave a damn about it (although – fair’s fair – the acupuncturists had done a certain amount for the cause, and the reflexologists had sexed things up a little, but in Elen’s view, the short-fall still fell…well, pretty damn short).

The foot had sloppy PR; it mouldered, uncomplainingly, down at the bottom (the fundus, the depths, the nadir) of the physiological hegemony. It had none of the pizzazz of the hand or the heart. The lips! The eyes (the eyes had it all their own way). Even the neck, the belly…the arse. Even the arse had a certain cachet.

But not the foot. The foot had none (the foot had Fergie, with her lover, sprawled on a deckchair, in the Côte du Tawdry).

The foot lived in purdah – in cold climes particularly. It was hidden away, crammed inside, squeezed.

Sometimes, as Elen dutifully chiselled into thickened wodges of hardened skin –

Ah, the bread-and-butter work…

– flakes of which would shoot like shrapnel on to her apron-front, hit her goggles, or fly past her ears, Sylvia Plath’s poem ‘Daddy’ would suddenly pop into her head and take up a brief residency there. She’d learned it at school…

‘You do not do, you do not do

Anymore, black shoe

In which I have lived like a foot

For thirty years, poor and white,

Barely daring to breath or Achoo.’

Ah yes

She loved that poem.

If she’d actually ever thought about it – and she honestly hadn’t – then she might have drawn a few, tired parallels between her own life and the life of the foot (that frustrating opposition of support and neglect). But then again, if she’d thought about it some more, she’d have realised that all struggles – foot-related or otherwise – could be encapsulated as some kind of battle between an object’s natural function and its actual – often thwarted – circumstances.

Them’s the breaks, huh?

Her own daddy (to extend the Plathian metaphor just one stage further), whom she’d admired devotedly (up until – and beyond – his premature death in 1989), had been a hard nut to crack; fair but irascible, sincere but undemonstrative, he’d worked his entire adult life in the Services. Elen had been a true Army Daughter (drilled, polished, guarded, wrapped up, packed off – sometimes left behind, sometimes shoved dutifully into a khaki knapsack).

There was never a happy medium with Dad: he was either perpetually absent or too resolutely there (like a badly focussed close-up –

Lobe –

Cheek –

Whoops!

Moustache –

Teeth –

Pore –

– in an amateur video), and each state (too little, too much) somehow rendered its opposite inexplicably traumatic.

He’d served four years in Germany, two, undercover, then was posted to Northern Ireland (where his iron nerve and skills in the realm of bomb disposal were deemed especially useful). He retired in ‘83 (well-decorated for bravery after the Falklands War).

Following two, brief years on Civvy Street (a wonderful reprieve for the family, but he’d found it hard to relax, felt drained and grey, seemed to sorely miss his old life of careless extremity) he’d joined the Metropolitan Police Marine Support Unit: the Underwater and Confined Space Search Team (even working – briefly – as a freelance safety consultant on the Channel Tunnel, although he’d resigned, in disgust, after their first fatality).

The circumstances of his own death had been profoundly unsatisfactory. He’d been one of countless casualties in the Marchioness Pleasure Boat Disaster (a small Thames cruise ship, pole-axed, in the dark, by an unlit dredger).

‘But what was he doing on the boat in the first place?’ people constantly asked. Try as Elen might, she could never provide an adequate answer.

It’d all been so very sudden (so abrupt, so random, so incredibly unfair). He’d faced eternity so many times: head on, with such unfathomable bravery; had gambled with life so fearlessly, only to be grabbed – snatched – from the rear; no chance to ‘take stock’ or ‘make his peace’. Denied, at the last – and this was the cruellest part – that pious mantle of ‘a noble sacrifice’.

Her mother (who’d long found the role of serviceman’s wife an uneasy one) promptly remarried a dairy farmer and now lived a life of bucolic bliss in rural North Yorkshire.

Anxiety over the welfare of her father had glued Elen and her mother tight at certain points during her child- and teen-hood, but with his unexpected demise, the bond had slackened. And there’d been some ill-feeling over her mother’s lack of involvement in the hard-fought campaign for a proper inquest (‘You think if some random judge finds the cruise-ship company negligent it’ll bring your father back to me?’ she’d griped. And then, later – when things got really nasty – ‘They don’t decorate the wives, Elen. Sometimes, when a man risks everything so easily you have to stop and wonder what “everything” actually means to him…’).

To cut things short: they were not so close now as they once had been.

Talking of fathers –

Yes

Good –

Moving swiftly on…

Franklin Charlesworth was the don. He was chiropody’s Big Daddy. His absolute classic Chiropody: Theory and Practice, Elen had owned in hardback (in its 5th edition) just about as long as she could remember (it’d got to the point, in Germany, during school holidays – she was ten – when she’d read virtually every tome in the Base’s library. So she’d borrowed this one. Pored over the pictures –

Oh my God!

What is that?!

– and had never troubled to take it back).

It was her Bible (that so-familiar frontispiece illustration of a septic bunion was her spiritual equivalent of Genesis – it was where everything first began). Charlesworth was definitely Moses (who else?). He delivered chiropody (or podiatry, as the Americans were so determined to call it) from the Dark Ages. He brought the tablets down from the mountain.

It was chiefly through his dedication, generosity, lateral thinking and hard endeavour that chiropody finally came to be recognised as a Medical Auxiliary (and won the Holy Grail: State Registration). It was the same text-book she’d used at college (her grades so superlative, they’d pushed her towards Surgery, but she’d resisted, for some reason).

Elen rarely dreamed, but when she did, Charlesworth provided her with the Foreword, the Contents, the Index, the Appendices. He represented so much for her (stuck a career-based band-aid over her emotional tribulations – such as they were), fulfilled all her wishes…

Uh…

Yes.

Skin diseases:

Count them off…

Primary Lesions:

The Macule,

The Papule,

The Tubercule,

The Vesicle,

The Pustule,

The Bulla,

The Wheal,

The Squames…

That’s all eight.

Good.

Secondary Lesions:

Crusts,

Ulcers,

Scars,

Fissures.

Just the four…

Count them…

Uh…

Charlesworth was her guide, her inspiration and her mentor. He was her role model; the parent who was never absent. He was her constant, her anchor. He’d given so much, for so long; was so painstaking, so fastidious…

Sometimes she’d lie in bed at night and consider the many years he’d spent embroiled in the careful manufacture of corrective, protective and palliative foot appliances –

Oh those magnificent, one-off, hand-stitched surgical boots – With the ‘Charlesworth’ splint, nestling softly inside…

Love could be rather like shoe-making, she’d quietly reason –

All in the finish –

And in the detailing…

For maximum comfort and minimum wear, your basic raw materials – be they plastic, synthetic, fabric or leather – had to be carefully – nay scrupulously – manipulated to fit. Over-the-counter, made-to-measure; it didn’t really matter. There was definitely a craft in it.

218.

No, seriously…

That’s Two Hundred (one, two, three, four, five –

Go on,

Count them)

– and Eighteen (one, eight) faults –

Yes, faults –

ie

Problems,

Botch-ups

– on your average New Build property.

218.

She’d seen it on a television report. Some houses fared slightly better, they’d claimed, and some fared slightly worse. But 218 was the average –

Can that really be right?

They’d also maintained – during this same incendiary broadcast –

Why oh why did I insist on staying up late?

Why didn’t I just go to bed early, like Isidore said?

– that the sensible buyer should at no costs –

Under Strictly No Circumstances

– consider purchasing a New Build property situated either in, or around, a notable dip. This was because most New Builds were sited on meadowland – bogs – flood plains; on the outskirts of town; the left-over bits of land; bits that nobody had ever bothered with before –

But hang on…

– Which inevitably begs the question, ‘Why?’

Exactly!

Hmmn…

Remote control –

Volume…uh…

Up

Were our ancestors all just thoroughly unadventurous? Were they obstinately – neurotically, even – attached to mounds and to hillocks? Was it merely a question of safety (of finding the best site to defend against the marauding invader)? Or was the population so tiny back then that they never felt the urge (there was simply no call) to build in these left-over places?

Finally (and here’s the rub) did they perhaps know something about the kinds of environments best suited for human habitation? Had they worked out this equation themselves, over time, through a system of trial and error? Did they have more respect for the pitfalls of nature? Did they understand the land? And then did we –

Those damn politicians –

And those evil-bastard, money-grabbing contractors –

– just conveniently resolve not to understand? To forget all the lessons they’d learned, and to build on these marginalised sites anyway (while offering a swift –

arrogant

– but mechanical nod to that delightfully infallible modern double-act of ‘progress’ and ‘technology’?

Infallible, that is, until they’ve got your damn money).

The bottom line (the programme stated) was that available sites were often empty for perfectly good reasons. If there wasn’t landfill somewhere in the general vicinity (oozing a terrifying cocktail of poisonous gases out into the stratosphere), then there would definitely be water.

That horrible, interminable drip, drip, drip…

Elen and Isidore lived in a New Build. It was set in a slight dip (a little saucer), and she absolutely hated it. She’d always loathed New Builds (she’d never made any bones about this fact. At root – Isidore carped – she was a snob. ‘So are you,’ she’d say, ‘but just of a different kind.’).

Of course a tiny part of her quite liked the idea of something new, something virgin, but it was only a very small part, and it was dramatically overshadowed by the general thrust of her opinion –

Unfashionable, maybe…

– that something’s intrinsic value was inversely proportional to its longevity –

The blackened frying-pan

The antique, diamond cuff-links

The family Bible

It’d been a sacrifice, but she’d made it in all good faith. She’d moved there for Isidore –

Clean slate,

New broom

– but it rapidly came between them. And the reasons? So far she’d tabulated 77 –

77 flaws

And while she knew that it was unhelpful, she simply couldn’t stop herself. She kept an on-going list, in chalk, on a small blackboard in the kitchen –

Day sixty-four:

The garage door is sticking…

– and every entry (in tinier and tinier writing, towards the bottom) caused her husband immeasurable suffering. But she kept on tabulating.

73 had just been insignificant things (a chip in the woodwork, a cracked tile, the oven grill not wired-in properly). Four had been fundamental:

1. The dip (obviously). The autumn after they’d moved in, the entire front garden had flooded. And it didn’t drain properly. And this had affected the front fascia. There was a great deal of mould. Black, dark green.

2. A crack in the kitchen. It wasn’t horizontal (like all good cracks should be). It zig-zagged, like a child’s drawing of lightning, and Isidore now thought –

Oh, great…

– that there might be a problem with one of the supporting walls.

3. The window-sills on the front of the house hadn’t been fixed in properly (hadn’t been made good). If you pulled at them, they either wobbled alarmingly or simply came away –

Actually came off

– in your hand.

4. The roof. It didn’t work. If you stood in the attic, craned your neck and looked up, you could see shafts of light shining in. Dozens of them. And the problem was especially severe around the chimney where the damp had spread lower, had entered the plaster. In Fleet’s room, the wall on the chimney-breast side felt as soft as icing sugar (you could push your fingers straight through the panelling) and the ceiling was starting to mould-up and to sag.

Power and Higson Ltd, the contractors –

All credit to them

– had been very sympathetic. They’d promptly sent around an independent surveyor, and he’d posited the precise sum they’d be willing to invest on ‘making good’. But they were well behind schedule, and it was winter, and their workers were all fully occupied in maintaining the build elsewhere –

Oh. Dear.

So they provided Isidore with a list of approved contacts for local firms who might – they believed – be able to do a good job. He left about thirty messages. He received only two responses. In both instances nobody was available to come over and even assess the job for the following two months.

He grew desperate. He pulled out the Yellow Pages and thumbed his way through the relevant section –

Uh…

A Priori Builders Ltd –

Okay…Uh…So that’s…

He tapped in the digits, and waited…

Damn.

Engaged.

His finger hovered – for the briefest of moments – over the redial button, but his eyes scanned onward…

AAABuilders and Plumbers PLC –

What?! You’ve got to be kidding!

Aardvaak Builders inc. –

Huh?!

Abacus…

Hmmn

Abacus Builders Ltd –

Sounds better

He called them. They answered. A meeting was set up for the following morning with Harvey, one of their key personnel.

Harvey arrived on time and made all the right noises (thought it was ‘a good little house, mate, a solid little dwellin’, just a few, small creases, and we’ll iron them out, no problem’).

He assured them – with all sincerity – that since they found themselves in ‘a rather urgent predicament’, a couple of his people would make a start on things by the following Tuesday (‘The kid deserves his own room back, poor bugger. It’s like a fucking paddlin’ pool up here…Look at his face! Just look at him! I think he might be in love with me. What’s your name, kid-o? Fleet? Mum got knocked up in the Motorway Services, did she? Eh? Only kidding! Okay, Dad, we’ll need to bang up some scaffoldin’, straight off, and an absolute, bloody ton of tarpaulin…’).

Harvey drove a bright red and gold, customised 4x4 Toyota Hi Lux with lifted suspension, imported, 39” Mickey Thompson tyres, an electric winch and PIAA lights, front and back. He took ‘the boys’ for ‘a quick spin’ in it. Elen stood and waited for them, out on the pavement. And she waited. And waited.

She checked her watch.

It was a full forty-three minutes until they finally returned home again. As Harvey re-entered the cul-de-sac – and performed a stately lap of honour – he sounded his siren.

It was a bastardised version of Madonna’s 1986 anti-abortion classic, ‘Papa Don’t Preach’, from the True Blue album.

‘Do you remember Chicken Licken?’ Elen whispered, tucking Fleet up for the third week in a row on the living-room sofa.

‘Uh-uh.’ Fleet slowly shook his head.

‘He thought the sky was falling in.’

‘Really?’ Fleet looked fearful, as if he could quite easily imagine the sky caving in on him. ‘Why did he think that?’

‘Because he got hit on the head by a chestnut – or an acorn – and he thought it was the sky.’

Fleet pondered this for a while. ‘Well that was very silly of him,’ he finally announced, with a slight air of pomposity.

‘Exactly.’

Elen gently adjusted his hair. His head seemed a little warm to the touch.

‘It’s only the ceiling,’ she murmured, kissing him, softly, on the ear, ‘it’s not the sky or anything.’

The boy smiled and turned tiredly over, shoving his face into his pillow, hooking his feet together (as was his habit, each night, before slumber).

Elen stood up to leave.

‘Well at least he likes the drip, drip, drip…’ the boy sighed.

She froze, just for a split second, then she forced herself back into motion; pulling his duvet still tighter around him. ‘When the builder comes,’ she spoke brightly, normally, ‘when Harvey comes, everything will be fine again, you’ll see.’

The mark –

The blemish

– there was no getting around it.

When she was born they’d thought it might fade. But it did not fade.

The mark was the first thing she saw each morning, and the last thing she saw, each night, before bed. Five hundred years ago, they might’ve burned her for it. And she seriously thought – at some sick, subterranean level – that they still would, if they possibly could (an unconscious suspicion remained. She saw it in people’s eyes – the revulsion, the hostility, the nagging fascination).

The mark was undoubtedly a blotch on her good name. But it was there, dammit. So she’d had to work her way around it, she’d had to be strong, to look beyond.

She never gave even a hint that it bothered her; was casual, cheerful and straightforward, in general, but she was only a woman, and not devoid of vanity (people would come up to her, in the street, and tap her, gently, on the shoulder, kindly informing her that there was something…

Uh…

Oh!

Realising what it was – becoming embarrassed – apologising – then dashing off, humiliated. And those were the nice ones).

The mark was the first thing Isidore noticed when they’d crashed into each other at the ice rink in Folkestone. They were both seventeen.

She’d been visiting the coast for a weekend, to catch up with her father. Isidore had just completed a six-week School Exchange Programme in Tenterden. He was cutting loose in the summer, doing some casual work – mainly manual labour.

He wasn’t actually wearing skates, but was walking, barefoot, on the ice. He was smiling, broadly, his boots hung around his neck by the laces. He looked a little crazy.

A representative of the rink’s management team was already hot on his trail, and Elen – distracted by his feet (they were strong and tanned and straight) – missed a beat and tripped and span, spiralling straight into him.

The mark…

He’d thought it might be chocolate, or mud, or blood, as he’d helped her up. He even thought – for a split second – that he might’ve been the cause of it…

‘Oh my God, are you all right?’

‘You’re German?’ she’d murmured, taking his hand, glancing up at him, smiling. He saw at once that it was a mole of some kind. A beauty-spot.

He grinned his relief as she brushed the ice from her knees. ‘Well whatever gave you that impression?’

She was exceptionally pretty. And the mark didn’t really bother him.

He already had a well-documented genius for circumnavigation.