Barefoot Love

I fell in love with him through his feet. His bare feet. Big bare feet. Bones like escaped tree roots.
The first time we met he wore no shoes at all. Imagine walking around like that all the time, I thought. Imagine how everything feels beneath the flat pads of soft skin, the curl of toes and the tennis ball heel. Imagine.
My husband, Simon, grunted as we swung into the shops, past this barefoot man. 'Can't afford shoes,' he said. 'But I bet he's got beer money.'
I looked for a long time at those feet. I thought about each stone that dented the skin. I wondered if this man had learned to ignore pain. We had a numbness in common, I knew it. He was like me.
I listened to this new feeling. Felt it fill my body. It muffled the low drone of Simon's voice. It covered everything like chocolate.
Who'd have thought, when you married in white, in perfection, that a husband could be so marginal?
And who'd have imagined a flower would appear out of nowhere like this, burst open, with its toes on show?

The second time we met he had one shoe that looked like it had been rescued from a roadside, lazily hanging from a haphazard foot, and the other was bare as before. Simon leaned into me as I fumbled in my purse, and he whispered. 'What's that all about, one shoe on one shoe off?'
I couldn't explain if I tried. I shrugged and pretended I hadn't noticed while I picked fifty ps from my purse like petals from a bud. He loves me, he loves me not. But it's impossible to think I hadn't noticed. This man's feet are big and flat and when I see them, naked, nothing protecting them, I feel something strange tugging at my insides. I feel a beautiful twist in my stomach. There is something so brazen about his foot nudity, something so intimate in the sight of his ankles, it makes me want to reach out and touch them.
I shook myself. Of course I couldn't actually touch this man, that would be crazy. I got myself together as me and Simon carried on and leaned heavily on the glass doors of the shopping centre. But I couldn't resist looking back. From this angle I could see the tendons stretching up to the backs of his legs, up into his trousers. Achilles heel. The nut of his ankle bone.

'What do you want for tea?' Simon asks on Saturday.
I think for a moment. I gaze at the sole of my own foot. How funny that they call it a sole. A soul. No one knows where your soul is. Perhaps it is in your foot. Mine looks like a wide paddle. I think. I think about a big toe. An island in a puddle if you went barefoot outside. I think about the little toes that follow it down the line. Little piggies. Pigs in blankets. This little piggy had roast beef. This little piggy had none'¦
'Roast beef?' my husband shrieks, as if I've dared to imagine an extravagant duck or baked sea bass. 'On a Saturday?' he says.
It's funny, but I never realised before I was married, that there were such tight rules for things like that. No beef on Saturdays. No wine mid-week. No late nights. Everything anchored in routine. No sudden whims. Nothing too impulsive.
I smile and shrug. But my heart's screaming.

*

It's the third time we will meet and all the hope in my body has accumulated in my chest and in my taught face and in the blaze of my skin. I walk towards the entrance of the shopping centre. The third entrance along. The one he always stands at. I can see him there, talking to someone. I pass my eyes over him like a thrown sheet on a statue. The style of his jeans is about ten years old. His shirt is faded and worn, a zip up the front confirming its age.
I move forward. 'Change'¦' he's saying to someone. 'Spare any change?'
No one else pays him any attention at all, or they avoid him with such purpose, I'm embarrassed for them, and him.
I pinpoint his eyes immediately. They're red. Filled with smoke or the bite of cold wind or tears.
I move towards him. I stare down at his feet and feel the plunge in my middle like a dunked head in a first-year's toilet bowl. He's wearing trainers. White trainers. They're too white. New. They look like untouched snow covering his boney feet and for a moment I try to imagine that's what they are and if I were to brush the frost away with my warm fingers, I would find the skin underneath. But he moves awkwardly and the shoes squeak on the floor. Disappointment drops into my middle. I think maybe his feet were the first thing I noticed about him, and the rest of him, his eyes, his hair, his smile, his body, all followed on from his toes like the curl of dye in water. If I can't see his feet'¦
He thanks me as I hand over some money, too much probably. Simon would go mad. I let that thought stick in my chest for a moment. It feels surprisingly good. It makes me smile. Simon would go mad if he could see the ten pound note leaving my hand now.
'You're giving him beer money.' he'd say.
If he knew, I tell myself, how my fingers nudge forward until they touch the dirty folds of this man's knuckles, Simon would be outraged at such impulsive behaviour. He'd be drenched in anger and jealousy'¦wouldn't he?
Then I do something that is so sudden and startling, I amaze myself. I can't see the pale, bare feet now, can't look at them and imagine how they feel. But every relationship has to move on, doesn't it? So I lean forward and kiss this man's cheek. Simon would go mad. While our faces meet, his beard soft like a doll's brush, I touch the cloth of his shirt, smell the faint ghost of sweat and push inwards to find his body. I hold there for a moment until he pulls away and gives a bewildered, scared look. I touched him. I shouldn't have done it, I know, but it's beyond my control. Irrational. Impulsive. Simon would die!
I smile. I can't help it. This is mad. I feel this one slanted act burn in my chest and disperse into my belly before I move on into the shopping centre. I chance a single glance back and he's staring at me as I walk away. It's crazy I know. But love, even if it's never fully reciprocated, even it's so one sided it makes you weak with trying, love makes you do the strangest things.

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