KATHLEEN TESSARO
ELEGANCE

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2003

Copyright © Kathleen Tessaro 2003

Lines from ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, taken from Collected Poems 1909–1962 by T.S. Eliot, reproduced by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd.

Extracts from Elegance by Genevieve Antoine Dariaux, published by Frederick Muller, reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Ltd.

Kathleen Tessaro asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780007151424

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2009 ISBN: 9780007330768

Version: 2016–12–12

I’d like to thank my dear friends Maria and Gavin for their inspiration and encouragement, all the girls at the Tuesday Night Wimpole Street Writers Workshop for teaching me how it’s done, Jonny Geller, Lynne Drew, and the entire team at HarperCollins, William Morrow and Curtis Brown for their support and vision. I’d also like to thank the London office of Wellington Management and Stephen McDermott in particular, who saved my manuscript from the ether more than once.

Dedication

To my friend and mentor, Jill Robinson.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Preface

What is Elegance?

Chapter 1 - A: Accessories

Chapter 2 - B: Beauty

Chapter 3 - C: Comfort

Chapter 4 - D: Daughters

Chapter 5 - E: Expecting

Chapter 6 - F: Fur

Chapter 7 - G: Girl friends

Chapter 8 - H: Husbands

Chapter 9 - I: Ideal Wardrobe

Chapter 10 - J: Jewellery

Chapter 11 - K: Knitwear

Chapter 12 - L: Lingerie

Chapter 13 - M: Make-up

Chapter 14 - N: Négligées

Chapter 15 - O: Occasions

Chapter 16 - P: Pounds

Chapter 17 - Q: Quality/Quantity

Chapter 18 - R: Restaurants

Chapter 19 - S: Sex

Chapter 20 - T: Tan

Chapter 21 - U: Uniformity

Chapter 22 - V: Veils

Chapter 23 - W: Weekends

Chapter 24 - X: Xmas

Chapter 25 - Y: Yachting

Chapter 26 - Z: Zips

Keep Reading

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

Preface

It’s a freezing cold night in February and my husband and I are standing outside the National Portrait Gallery in Trafalgar Square.

‘Here we are,’ he says. But neither of us moves.

‘Look,’ he bargains with me, ‘if it’s dreadful, we’ll just leave. We’ll stay for one drink and go. We’ll use a code word: potato. When you want to go, just say the word potato in a sentence and then I’ll know you want to leave. OK?’

‘I could always just tell you I want to leave,’ I point out.

He frowns at me. ‘Louise, I know you don’t want to do this, but you could at least make an effort. She’s my mother, for Christ’s sake and I promised we’d come. It’s not every day that you’re part of a major photographic exhibition. Besides, she really likes you. She’s always saying how the three of us ought to get together.’

The three of us.

I sigh and stare at my feet. I’m dying to say it: potato. Potato, potato, potato.

I know it’s a complete cliché to hate your mother-in-law. And I abhor a cliché. But when your mother-in-law is a former model from the 1950s, who specializes in reducing you to a blithering pulp each time you see her, then there is really only one word that springs to mind. And that word is potato.

He wraps an arm around me. ‘This really isn’t a big deal, Pumpkin.’

I wish he wouldn’t call me pumpkin.

But there are some things you do, if not for love, then at least for a quiet life. Besides, we’d paid for a cab, he’d had a shave, and I was wearing a long grey dress I normally kept in a plastic dry cleaning bag. We’d come too far to turn back now.

I lift my head and force a smile. ‘All right, let’s go.’ We walk past the two vast security guards and step inside.

I strip off my brown woolly overcoat and hand it to the coat check attendant, discreetly passing my hand over my tummy for a spot check. I can feel the gentle protrusion. Too much pasta tonight. Comfort food. Comfort eating. Why tonight, of all nights? I try to suck it in but it requires too much effort. So I give up.

I hold out my hand. He takes it, and together we walk into the cool, white world of the Twentieth Century Galleries. The buzz and hum of the crowd engulfs us as we make our way across the pale marble floor. Young men and women, dressed in crisp white shirts, swing by balancing trays of champagne and in an alcove a jazz trio are plucking out the sophisticated rhythms of ‘Mack the Knife’.

Breathe, I remind myself, just breathe.

And then I see them: the photographs. Rows and rows of stunning black and white portraits and fashion shots, a collection of the famous photographer Horst’s work from the 1930s through to the late sixties, mounted against the stark white walls, smooth and silvery in their finish. The flawless, aloof faces gaze back at me. I long to linger, to lose myself in the world of the pictures.

However, my husband grips my shoulder and propels me forward, waving to his mother, Mona, who’s standing with a group of stylish older women at the bar.

‘Hello!’ he shouts, suddenly animated, coming over all jolly and larger than life. The tired, silent man in the cab is replaced by a dazzling, gregarious, social raconteur.

Mona spots us and waves back, a little half scooping royal wave, the signal for us to join her. Turning our shoulders sideways, we squeeze through the crowd, negotiating drinks and lit cigarettes. As we come into range I pull a face that I hope passes as a smile.

She is wonderfully, fantastically, superhumanly preserved. Her abundant silver-white hair is swept back from her face in an elaborate chignon, making her cheekbones appear even more prominent and her eyes feline. She holds herself perfectly straight, as if she spent her entire childhood nailed to a board, and her black trouser suit betrays the causal elegance of Donna Karan’s tailoring. The women around her are all cut from the same, expensive cloth and I suspect we’re about to join a kind of ageing models’ reunion.

‘Darling!’ She takes her son’s arm and kisses him on both cheeks. ‘I’m so pleased you could make it!’ My husband gives her a little squeeze.

‘We wouldn’t miss it for the world, would we, Louise?’

‘Certainly not!’ I sound just that bit too bright to be authentic.

She acknowledges me with a brisk nod of the head, then turns her attention back to her son. ‘How’s the play, darling? You must be exhausted! I saw Gerald and Rita the other day; they said you were the best Constantine they’d ever seen. Did I tell you that?’ She turns to her collection of friends. ‘My son’s in The Seagull at the National! If you ever want tickets, you must let me know.’

He holds his hands up. ‘It’s completely sold out. There’s not a thing I can do.’

Out comes the lower lip. ‘Not even for me?’

‘Well,’ he relents, ‘I can try.’

She lights a cigarette. ‘Good boy. Oh, let me introduce you, this is Carmen, she’s the one with the elephants on the far wall over there and this is Dorian, you’ll recognize at least her back from the famous corset shot, and Penny, well, you were the face of 1959, weren’t you!’

We all laugh and Penny sighs wistfully, extracting a packet of Dunhill’s from her bag. ‘Those were the days! Lend me a light, Mona?’

Mona passes her a gold, engraved lighter and my husband shakes his head. ‘Mums, you promised to stop.’

‘But darling, it’s the only way to keep your figure, isn’t that right, girls?’ Their heads bob up and down in unison behind a thick cloud of smoke.

And then it happens; I’m spotted.

‘And this must be your wiiiiiiife!’ Penny gasps, turning her attention to me. Spreading her arms wide, she shakes her head in disbelief and for one horrible moment it looks as if I’m expected to walk into them. I dither stupidly and am about to take a step forward when she suddenly contracts in delight. ‘You are adoooooorable!’ she coos, turning to the others for affirmation. ‘Isn’t she just adoooooooooooorable?’

I stand there, grinning idiotically, while they stare at me.

My husband comes to the rescue. ‘Can I get you ladies another drink?’ He tries to attract the bartender’s attention.

‘Oh, you perfect angel!’ Mona smoothes down his hair with her hand. ‘Champagne all around!’

‘And you?’ He turns to me.

‘Oh yes, champagne, why not?’

Mona takes my arm proprietorially. She gives it a little cuddle, the kind of disarming squeeze your best friend used to give you when you were ten that made your heart leap. My heart leaps now at this unexpected show of affection and I half hate myself for it. I’ve been here before and I know it’s dangerous to allow yourself to be seduced by her, even for a second.

‘Now, Louise,’ she has a voice of surprising power and depth, ‘tell me how you’re doing. I want to hear everything!’

‘Well …’ My mind races, desperately flicking through the facts of my life for some worthy gem. The other women look up at me expectantly. ‘Things are good, Mona … really good.’

‘And your parents? How’s the weather in Pittsburgh? Louise is from Pittsburgh,’ she mouths, sotto voce.

‘They’re well, thank you.’

She nods. I feel like a contestant being introduced on an afternoon quiz show and like any good quiz show host, she helps to jog me along when I dry up.

‘And are you working right now?’

She says the word ‘working’ with the kind of subtle significance that all showbiz people do; there is, after all, a world of difference between ‘working’ and having a job when you’re in ‘the profession’.

I know all this but refuse to play along.

‘Well, yes. I’m still with the Phoenix Theatre Company.’

‘Is it an acting job? Our Louise fancies herself as a bit of an actress,’ she offers, by way of an explanation.

‘Well, I was an actress,’ I blunder. No matter how hard I try, she always catches me out. ‘I mean, I haven’t really worked in a while. And no, this isn’t an acting job, it’s working front of house, in the box office.’

‘I see,’ she smiles, as if she can discern a deeper meaning I’m not aware of. And then Dorian asks the most dreaded question of all.

‘Have we seen you in anything?’

‘Well, of course I’ve done the odd commercial.’ I try to sound casual, shrugging my shoulders as if to imply ‘who hasn’t?’

‘Really?’ She arches an eyebrow in a perfect impersonation of a woman impressed. ‘What commercials?’

Damn.

‘Well …’ I try to think. ‘There was the Reader’s Digest Sweepstakes Campaign. You may have caught me in that one.’

She stares at me blankly.

‘You know, the one where they’re all flying around in a hot air balloon over England, drinking champagne and searching for the winners. I was the one on the left holding a map and pointing to Luton.’

‘Ah ha.’ She’s being polite. ‘Well, that sounds fun.’

‘And now you’re working in the box office.’ Mona wraps the whole thing up in a clean, little package.

‘Yes, well, I’ve got a couple of things in the pipeline, so to speak … but right now that’s what I’m doing.’ I want my arm back quite badly now.

She gives it another little squeeze. ‘It is a difficult profession, darling. Best to know your limitations. I always advise young women to avoid it like the plague. The simple truth is, it takes more discipline and sacrifice than most modern girls are willing to put up with. Have you seen my picture?’

Keep smiling, I tell myself. If you keep smiling, she’ll never know that you want her to die. ‘No, I haven’t had much of a chance to look around yet; we’ve only just got here.’

‘Here, allow me.’ And she pulls me over to a large photograph of her from the 1950s.

She’s incredibly young, almost unrecognizable, except for the distinctive, almond shape of the eyes and the famous cheekbones, which remain untouched by time. She’s leaning with her back pressed against a classical pillar, her face turned slightly to the camera, half in shadow, half in light. Her pale hair falls in artfully styled curls over her shoulders and she’s wearing a strapless gown of closely fitted layers of flowing silk chiffon. It’s labelled, ‘Vogue, 1956.’

‘What do you think?’ she asks, eyeing me carefully.

‘I think it’s beautiful,’ I say, truthfully.

‘You have taste.’ She smiles.

A press photographer recognizes her and asks if he can take her picture.

‘Story of my life!’ she laughs and I make my escape while she poses.

I look around the crowded room for my husband. Finally I spot him, laughing with a group of people in the corner. He has two glasses of champagne in his hands and as I make my way over, he looks up and catches my eye.

I smile and he says something, turns and walks towards me before I can join them.

‘Who are they?’ I ask, as he hands me a glass.

‘No one, just some people from one of these theatre clubs. They recognized me from the play.’ He guides me back towards the photographs. ‘How are you getting on with Mums?’

‘Oh, fine,’ I lie. ‘Just fine.’ I turn back and look but they’re gone, swallowed by the ever shifting crowd. ‘Didn’t you want to introduce me?’

He laughs and pats my bottom, which I hate and which he only ever seems to do in public. ‘No, not at all! Don’t be so paranoid. To be frank, they’re a bit, shall we say, over-enthusiastic. I don’t want them boring my charming wife, now do I?’

‘And who might that be?’ I sound much more acerbic than I’d intended.

He pats my bottom again and ignores me.

We pause in front of a photograph of a woman smoking a cigarette, her eyes hidden by the brim of her hat. She leans, waiting in a doorway on a dark, abandoned street. It must’ve been taken just after the Second World War. There’s something unsettling in the contrast of the shattered surroundings and the pristine perfection of her crisp, tailored suit.

‘Now that’s style,’ my husband sighs.

Suddenly it’s too hot. I feel overwhelmed by the crush of people, the smoke, and the sound of too many over-animated conversations. Mona’s waving to us again but I allow my husband to walk over to her and make my way into a smaller, less crowded room off the main gallery instead. There’s a flat, wooden bench in the centre. I sit down and close my eyes.

It’s foolish to get so tense. In another hour, it will all be over. Mona will have had her moment of glory and we’ll be safely on our way back home. The thing to do is relax. Enjoy myself. I open my eyes and take a deep breath.

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.

Yes, but I do.

What is Elegance?

It is a sort of harmony that rather resembles beauty with the difference that the latter is more often a gift of nature and the former a result of art. If I may be permitted to use a high-sounding word for such a minor art, I would say that to transform a plain woman into an elegant one is my mission in life.

—Genevieve Antoine Dariaux

It was a slim, grey volume entitled Elegance. It was buried between a fat, obviously untouched tome on the history of the French monarchy and a dog-eared paperback edition of D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love. Longer and thinner than the other books on the shelf, it rose above its modest surroundings with a disdainful authority, the embossed letters of its title sparkling against the silver satin cover like a glittering gold coin just below the surface of a rushing brook.

My husband claims I have an unhealthy obsession with second-hand bookshops. That I spend too much time daydreaming altogether. But either you intrinsically understand the attraction of searching for hidden treasure amongst rows of dusty shelves or you don’t; it’s a passion, bordering on a spiritual illness, which cannot be explained to the unafflicted.

True, they’re not for the faint of heart. Wild and chaotic, capricious and frustrating, there are certain physical laws that govern second-hand bookstores and, like gravity, they’re pretty much non-negotiable. Paperback editions of D. H. Lawrence must constitute no less than 55 per cent of all stock in any shop. Natural law also dictates that the remaining 45 per cent consists of at least two shelves’ worth of literary criticism on Paradise Lost, and there should always be an entire room in the basement devoted to military history which, by sheer coincidence, will be haunted by a man in his seventies. (Personal studies prove it’s the same man. No matter how quickly you move from one bookshop to the next, he’s always there. He’s forgotten something about the war that no book can contain, but like a figure in Greek mythology, is doomed to spend his days wandering from basement room to basement room, searching through memoirs of the best/worst days of his life.)

Modern booksellers can’t really compete with these eccentric charms. They keep regular hours, have central heating and are staffed by freshly scrubbed young people in black tee-shirts. They’re devoid both of basement rooms and fallen Greek heroes in smelly tweeds. You’ll find no dogs or cats curled up next to ancient space heaters like familiars nor the intoxicating smell of mould and mildew that could emanate equally from the unevenly stacked volumes or from the owner himself. People visit Waterstone’s and leave. But second-hand bookshops have pilgrims. The words ‘out of print’ are a call to arms for those who seek a Holy Grail made of paper and ink.

I reach up and carefully remove the book from its shelf. Sitting down on a stack of military history books (they will migrate if you’re not careful), I open to the title page.

Elegance

By Genevieve Antoine Dariaux

it announces in elaborate script and then, underneath:

A complete guide for every woman who wants to be well and properly dressed on all occasions.

Dariaux. I know that name. Could it be the same woman I saw in the photo? As I leaf through the book, the faint fragrance of jasmine perfume floats from its yellowed pages. Written in 1964, it appears to be a kind of encyclopaedia, with entries for every known fashion dilemma starting with A and going through to Z. I’ve never before encountered anything quite like it. I flip through the pages in search of a photo of the author. And there, on the back cover, my efforts are rewarded.

She looks to be in her late fifties, with classic, even features and heavily lacquered white hair – Margaret Thatcher hair before it had a career of its own. But the same black, intelligent eyes gleam back at me; I recognize the distinctive, imperious set of her mouth and there, luminous against the fitted black cardigan she’s wearing, is the trade-mark strand of impeccably matched pearls. Madame Georges Antoine Dariaux, the caption below the photo reads. She doesn’t look directly at the camera with the same beguiling candour of her earlier portrait, but rather beyond it, as if she’s too polite to challenge our gaze. Older now, she’s naturally more discreet, and discretion is, after all, the cornerstone of elegance.

I turn back eagerly to the preface.

Elegance is rare in the modern world, largely because it requires precision, attention to detail, and the careful development of a delicate taste in all forms of manners and style. In short, it does not come easily to most women and never will.

However, in my 30-year career as the directress of the Nina Ricci Salon in Paris, my life has been devoted to advising our clients and helping them to select what is most flattering. Some are exquisitely beautiful and really need no assistance from me at all. I enjoy admiring them as one enjoys admiring a work of art, but they are not the clients I cherish the most. No, the ones that I am fondest of are those who have neither the time nor the experience necessary to succeed in the art of being well-dressed. For these women, I am willing to turn my imagination inside out.

Now, would you like to play a little game of Pygmalion? If you have a little confidence in me, let me share with you some practical ideas on one of the surest ways of making the most of yourself – through elegance, your own elegance.

At last, I have found my Holy Grail.

It’s only 4 pm, but it’s already growing dark when I leave the shop. I weave through the streets; down Bell Street, over Marble Arch, across St James’s and then into Westminster, clutching my magical parcel.

Big Ben chimes in the background as I push open the door and am greeted by the sound of a Hoover.

My husband is home.

There’s something about the persistent, draining, incessancy of domesticity that signals a call to arms for my husband. (Those who know him only as a rising star of the London stage are, in fact, blind to his most astonishing talents.) Each day finds him bravely battling the enemies of filth, disorder, untidiness and decay with renewed determination. A resourceful soul, he can transform any sort of disarray into a clean, habitable environment, usually in under half an hour.

He can’t hear me as I come in, so I poke my head into the living room where he is furiously forcing the vacuum over the parquet wood floor (he claims to be able to actually see the dust settling on it, so remarkable is his sensitivity to that sort of thing) and shout to him.

‘Hey!’

Switching off the Hoover, he rests his arms against its handle, with the same masculine ease of a television cowboy leaning on a fence. He is a man in his element, setting the world to rights.

‘Hey yourself. What’ve you been up to?’

‘Oh, nothing really,’ I fib, concealing the brown paper parcel behind my back. In the face of my husband’s never-ending schedule of home improvements, spending an afternoon ferreting around old bookshops seems like a kind of betrayal.

‘Did you return that lampshade?’

‘Ah, yes …’ I confirm, ‘but I couldn’t find anything better, so they gave me a credit note.’

He sighs, and we both look mournfully at the pale marble lamp Mona gave us a month ago.

In every marriage there are certain ties that bind. Much more substantial than the actual marriage vows, these are the real-life, unspoken forces that keep it glued together, day in and day out, year after year, through endless trial and adversity. For some people it’s their social ambitions, for others their children. But in our case, the pursuit of the perfect lampshade will do.

We are bound, my husband and I, by a complete, relentless commitment to the interior decoration of our home. And this lamp is the delinquent, drug-addicted teenager that threatens to destroy our domestic bliss by refusing to coordinate with any ready-made lampshade from a reasonably priced store. It’s incredibly heavy and almost impossible to lift. We are doomed to a Sisyphean fate: forever purchasing lampshades we will only return the next day.

My husband shakes his head. ‘We’re going to have to go to Harrods,’ he says gravely.

Harrods is always a last resort. There will be no ‘reasonable’ lampshades at Harrods.

‘But you know what?’ he adds, his face brightening. ‘You can come with me and we’ll make a day of it if you like.’

‘Sure,’ I smile.

Lampshade Day – certain to be right up there with the Great Garden Trellis Outing and the Afternoon of a Dozen Shower Hoses. ‘Wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

‘Great.’ He forces one of the windows open, relishing the gust of cool air. ‘Of course, you’ll be glad to know I’ve had considerably more success here while you were away.’

‘Really?’

‘You know those pigeons that roost on the drainpipe just above the bedroom window?’

‘Yeah …’ I lie.

‘Well, I’ve attached some barbed wire around the pipe. That’s the last we’ll see of them!’

I’m still trying to place these pigeons. ‘Well done you!’

‘And that’s not all. I’ve got some fantastic ideas for draining the garden path which I’m going to draw up during the interval tonight. Maybe I can show them to you later?’

‘Sounds brilliant. Listen, I’m just going to do some reading in the other room. Maybe you’ll look in on me before you go?’

He nods, surveying the living room contentedly. ‘It’s all coming together, Louie. I mean, the place is really starting to shape up. All we need is that lampshade.’

I watch as he switches the Hoover back on.

There is always one more lampshade, one more set of authentic looking faux-Georgian fire utensils, one more non-slip natural hessian runner carpet. Like Daisy’s green light in the Great Gatsby, these things call to us with the promise of a final, lasting happiness, yet somehow remain forever out of reach.

Retreating into the bedroom, I close the door, kick off my shoes and curl up on the bed.

The bed is enormous. It’s actually two single beds that are joined in the centre. ‘Zipped and Linked’ is what the man at John Lewis called it. We needed a bed that was big enough so that we wouldn’t disturb each other in the night: my husband twitches like a dog and I can’t bear noise or any sort of movement.

‘You are sure you want to sleep together?’ the salesman had asked when we briefed him of our requirements. But my husband was adamant. ‘We’ve only just been married,’ he informed the offending fellow haughtily, implying a kind of rampant, newlywed sex life that could only just be contained within the confines of a solidly made double bed. So now he twitches away somewhere west of me and I slumber, comatose, half a mile to the east.

Climbing underneath the duvet, I remove the delicate volume from its brown paper bag. I’m on the verge of something very big, very real.

This is it.

I open to Chapter One.

And the next thing I know, I’m asleep.

When I wake up, he’s already gone to the theatre. There’s a note on the kitchen table. ‘Were snoring, so didn’t bother to wake you.’ My husband is nothing, if not concise.

This is bad.

The truth is, I sleep far too much – wake up late, take naps in the afternoon, go to bed early. I live with one foot dangling in a dark, warm, pool of unconsciousness, ready at any moment to slide into oblivion. But it’s just a little bit anti-social, all this sleeping, so I try to hide it.

I make toast. (I believe that’s what’s known as cooking for one.) Then climb back on board the bed. Turning to the first letter in the alphabet, I try not to get butter on the pages.

A Accessories

You can always tell the character of a woman by the care and attention she lavishes upon the details of her dress. The accessories worn with an outfit – gloves, hat, shoes, and handbag – are among the most important elements of an elegant appearance. A modest dress or suit can triple its face value when worn with an elegant hat, bag, gloves, and shoes, while a designer’s original can lose much of its prestige if its accessories have been carelessly selected. It is indispensable to own a complete set of accessories in black and, if possible, another in brown, plus a pair of beige shoes and a beige straw handbag for the summer. With this basic minimum, almost any combination is attractive.

Of course, it would be ideal to have each set of accessories in two different versions: one for sport and the other dressy. And in this regard I cannot restrain myself from expressing the dismay I feel when I see a woman carry an alligator handbag with a dressy ensemble merely because she has paid an enormous sum of money for it. Alligator is strictly for sports or travel, shoes as well as bags, and this respected reptile should be permitted to retire every evening at 5 pm.

And here, as in no other department, quality is essential. Be strict with yourself. Save. Economize on food if you must (believe me, it will do you good!) but not on your handbags or shoes. Refuse to be seduced by anything that isn’t first rate. The saying, ‘I cannot afford to buy cheaply,’ was never so true. Although I am far from rich, I have bought my handbags for years from Hermès, Germaine Guerin, and Roberta. And without exception, I have ended up by giving away all the cheap little novelty bags that I found irresistible at first. The same is true of shoes and gloves.

I realize that all of this may seem rather austere, and even very expensive. But these efforts are one of the keys, one of the Open Sesames that unlock the door to elegance.

I look down at my own handbag crumpled in a heap on the floor. It’s a navy Gap rucksack – the kind that seems to attract bits of dried biscuit to the bottom, even if you haven’t eaten a biscuit in months. Needless to say, it could do with a wash.

Or a glass of milk.

I wonder if it qualifies as a sports bag. I can remember purchasing it in the ‘Back to School’ department several seasons ago and feeling quite elated that I’d managed to resolve all my handbag dilemmas in a single swoop. It would never occur to me to buy more than one bag, in more than one colour or style.

The only other one I own is a squashed maroon leather shoulder bag I bought in the sale from Hobbs four years ago. The leather has worn away and the framework of the bag is exposed; however I’m too attached to it to throw it away. I keep pretending that I’m going to have it repaired, even though it’s gone out of style.

The more I think of it, the more hard pressed I am to think of any accessories I own that might be described as even remotely stylish, let alone first rate. Certainly not the collection of woolly brown and grey berets I live in, so practical because they won’t blow off your head during the windy London winters and because they’re invaluable for those days (always on the increase) when I haven’t washed or even combed my hair. I like to think of them as ‘emergency hair’.

I find myself gazing at my feet, or rather at the pair of well-worn beige plimsolls that adorn them. It’s been raining and they’re soaked through. The fabric’s worn away above my big toe and I catch a glimpse of the green and red Christmas socks underneath. (My mother sent me those.) I give my big toe a little wiggle.

My nose is running and as I fumble for a tissue in my raincoat pocket, I discover a pair of mismatched black gloves I found on the floor of a movie theatre two weeks ago. They seemed like quite a find at the time but suddenly it’s clear, even to me, that I’ve obviously not been lavishing enough care and attention on the details of my dress.

Elegance may be in the details but my situation appears to be a little more serious than that. Clearly, drastic action is needed. I resolve, in an unprecedented burst of enthusiasm, to begin my transformation with a thorough cleansing of my closet. Systematically working my way through, I’ll weed out the elements that don’t flatter me. And then I’ll be free to construct a new, improved look around those that do.

Fine, let’s get cracking! I fling open my closet door with a dramatic sweep of my arms and nearly pass out from hopelessness.

I possess a rail of items gleaned from second-hand clothing stores all over the country. Everything in front of me symbolizes an element of compromise. Skirts that fit around the waist but flare out like something Maria Von Trapp would wear. Piles of itchy or slightly moth-eaten woolly jumpers – not one of them in my size. Coats in strange fabrics or suit jackets with no matching skirts bought simply because they fit and that in itself is an event.

But that’s not the scariest thing. No, the thing that completely stuns me is the colour. Or rather the lack of it. When did I decide that brown was the new black, grey, scarlet, navy and just about any other shade you can name? What would the Colour Me Beautiful girls make of that? Or Freud, for that matter?

I stare in fascinated longing at the bold, crimson drawing room of the house across the street but my own walls are magnolia. Matte magnolia, to be precise. And now here it is: the dreadful consequences of playing it safe. I have the wardrobe of an eighty-year-old Irish man. That is, an eighty-year-old Irish man who doesn’t care what he looks like.

However, I won’t be put off.

I open my underwear drawer.

I dump the entire contents on the floor.

I sift through the piles of runned and not too runned tights (the only kind I own), the baggy knickers, the ones with the elastic showing, and the bras I should never have put in the washing machine which now have bits of deadly under-wire poking through them. I diligently make piles of keeps and non-keeps.

Done.

I go to the kitchen, grab a black bin liner and begin to fill it. A strange, unfamiliar energy infuses me and before I know it, I’m working my way through the rest of my clothes.

Piles of ugly, vague, brown garments rapidly disappear. I throw away jumpers, jackets, and every last one of the Sound of Music skirts. Here’s another bin liner: in go the worn out shoes, the natty scarves. Now the maroon leather handbag from Hobbs. I can buy a new one. Beads of perspiration run down my face and in my cupboard empty hangers clash together like wind chimes. I tie the tops of the bags together and drag them out to the garbage bins at the back of the building. It’s dark; I feel like a criminal destroying the evidence of a particularly gory crime.

Finally, I stand in front of my near empty wardrobe and survey the result of all this effort. A pale pink Oxford shirt swings from the rail, a single black skirt, a navy fitted pinafore dress. On the floor in front of me, there’s a small pile of just about wearable underwear.

This is it. This is now the basis of my new wardrobe, my new identity and my new life.

I take a Post-it from the desk in the corner, write on it in bright red marker, and stick it on the corner of the wardrobe mirror.

‘Never be seduced by anything that isn’t first rate,’ it reminds me.

No, never again.

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