‘Indeed,’ Malcolm says, his eyes as bright as hers. ‘This will needsomethinking about.’
Feeling rather overwhelmed Jo says, weakly, ‘Ruth, who is Karl Marx meeting?’
Ruth opens up her yellow and white striped notebook and frowns. ‘I’m not sure I’ve heard of her either.’ She looks enquiringly at Malcolm. ‘Leslie Hutchinson?’
‘Leslie was actually a man, and you might have heard of him by his stage name, Hutch.’
‘Hutch? That’s more familiar. Why am I thinking of Nat King Cole?’
‘You are heading in the right direction,’ Malcolm assures her, looking positively bushy-tailed. ‘He was a cabaret star, originally from Grenada, but eventually he settled in London. He was performing a few years earlier than Nat King Cole. Maybe “Cole” came to mind because you recalled he was Cole Porter’s lover for some time. As he was, of Edwina Mountbatten, Earl Mountbatten’s wife.’
‘Oh my!’ and Ruth is really laughing now. ‘So Hutch and Karl Marx …’ Ruth grins, ‘This is fascinating. I can’t wait to start reading your notes.’
‘How about you, Joanne, who have you got?’ Malcolm asks, with all the appearance of someone who does not already know the answer.
Jo opens the damaged notebook. ‘William Foyle. Founder of the bookshop,’ she says without reading a word of what is written there.
‘Oh, you will enjoy his story,’ Malcolm says. ‘He was a great character. When he was in charge, Foyles was the most famous bookshop in the world. They called him the Barnum of booksellers.’
Jo hurriedly opens the red notebook. ‘John Lobb?’ she says, looking enquiringly at Malcolm.
‘Lobb, you say?’ And with this he ducks his head down and, picking up his purple and orange slippers, he disappears through a small door set in the wall to the side of the mahogany table. Ruth and Jo stare at each other as they listen to Malcolm’s feet running up the stairs.
A few minutes later, Jo and Ruth hear a heavier tread descending the stairs and Malcolm reappears in the sitting room. Instead of the exotic slippers, he is wearing a pair of smart black brogues. He walks over and, lifting his trouser legs slightly, clips his heels together.
‘I give you the work of John Lobb.’
Then, as if regretting such a theatrical entrance, he colours and, looking flustered, quickly sits down. ‘Although these shoes were not of course made by the great man himself. John Lobb died in 1895.’
‘Lobb. Yes, Ihaveheard of them,’ Ruth admits, smiling. ‘Don’t they have a very smart store in London?’
‘Oh yes, their shop is on St James’s Street, where they continue to make handmade shoes. I bought these shoes there when I was twenty-five. So that makes these shoes forty-eight years old.’
Jo does a quick mental calculation of Malcolm’s age: seventy-three. So seven years younger than Uncle Wilbur.
‘Well they are in amazing condition,’ Ruth says, peering at Malcolm’s feet.
‘Oh, they are built to last. Oh, please excuse my pun,’ Malcolm chortles. ‘Every customer’s foot has their own wooden last – a piece of wood that has been carved to the customer’s exact foot dimensions, so that their shoes can be made to fit perfectly. They have a store of these personal lasts, going back over more than a hundred years.’
Jo wants to ask how much these shoes cost, but doesn’t like to.
‘So how much would it cost me to have a pair of handmade shoes?’ Ruth enquires.
Jo suppresses a smile.
‘I’m afraid to say that, these days, itwould be quite a few thousand pounds, and it takes several months to make them. So many highly skilled craftsmen and women are involved.’
Ruth studies Malcolm’s feet, head tilted to the side. ‘Well, that is definitely beyond my budget, but if they last that long I can see why you might invest in them.’
‘What did make you buy them?’ Jo asks, emboldened by Ruth’s directness.
‘My father always wore Lobb shoes and boots, and when I came into a small inheritance at twenty-five, I decided to invest in a pair myself.’
‘Did your father take you to buy them?’ Jo asks, envisaging this tradition being passed down from father to son.
Her romantic imaginings are brought up short by Malcolm’s answer.
‘No, my father died in a car crash when I was twelve. As did my younger brother.’ He hesitates, his voice wavering. ‘They had been on their way to get the Sunday papers, my brother had gone along in the hope of sweets. The money I received at twenty-five was from a small trust fund my father had set up when I was born.’
