In which I go for an upgrade
I am, literally, clutching my pearls. I’m outside Tiffany & Co in London’s Old Bond Street, with the box containing the last vestige of my 40-year love affair with David. It’s as though it contains ashes. As though he was once my pet.
There is a security guard at the door. I am a little ashamed of my battered, chewed-by-Teddy Prada handbag, given to me by the designer over 20 years ago. The security guard doesn’t seem to notice, and ushers me in. I do love high-end jewellers: they are as quiet as churches, worshipping as they do at the altar of money, and women who are smart enough to marry up, not down, as I did. I was once given a tour of Cartier in Paris. Elizabeth Taylor was a customer – her face is on the wall, everywhere. She only pretended that Richard Burton bought her jewels, to save his face. Cartier gave me a handbag, which I, in turn, gave to my sister in Australia. The one Chanel bag I have ever been gifted, I bequeathed to my sister Clare, who died not long after, and I NEVER GOT IT BACK.
I’m shown to a seat, and a young woman carefully takes the corpse of my relationship into a back room. I am always nervous when they do this. It is like the Chancery Lane branch of NatWest, early 80s, when I would go inside to cash a cheque (this was before ATMs were everywhere), and they would say, ‘Just one moment.’
I fully expected a portcullis to come down and an alarm go off.
I was quite prepared for the young woman to return shaking her lovely head, to break the news: ‘I’m so sorry, but these are plastic.’ But no. Hurrah! I can choose a pair of Elsa Peretti diamond stud earrings in a bevel setting, and only have to fork out £90! As Basil Fawlty once said to Polly, ‘For the first time in my life, I’m ahead!’ There was a moment of nostalgia, too, as I fondled the robin’s egg-blue little box. Before my wedding, I brought my two nieces, Sophie and Anna, here to buy them their first Tiffany necklaces: little silver kidney beans. God, the optimism I used to have, the largesse. Gone, disappeared, as though it never happened, like the recent covering of snow in the Dales.
I almost ran out of the store. I skipped to Selfridges, my spiritual home, to get one ear pierced: the lobe had to be sewn up by a plastic surgeon after the earrings my ex-husband gave me disappeared down the hole as the diamonds were so small, meaning it became infected. Private Eye later wrote I got divorced due to having to upgrade jewellery.
Even though I emailed
David to thank him for the wildly expensive gift out of nowhere (I haven’t told him I’ve exchanged it), he hasn’t replied. Do men send women something from Tiffany if they no longer love them? Isn’t that mixed signals?
As I asked him in my email, ‘What does the gift mean?’ I thought better of adding, ‘exactly’.
I think David regrets not doing more to hang on to me.
I’ve been thinking the same about my ex-husband. The other day, I found online a photo of me with him at his book launch*, in 2006. Despite the fact The Daily Telegraph, in a catty piece by a staunchly Catholic female writer (thank you, God. Farewell, sisterhood), said I looked like a ‘cadaver’, desperately clinging on to him with huge, wild eyes, I think I looked lovely. I even remember what I was wearing: a cream Chloé smock, borrowed from the designer. My former husband, Nirpal, was gazing at me in a way that can only be described as what happens when Mini spots a cocktail sausage. I am certain that he did love me, once. He must regret losing me. We had such a lovely, privileged life. I was clearly not an ‘old hag’, as he was wont to call me.
PS Have you read Hags, by Victoria Smith? It’s utterly brilliant. There are far worse things to do than grow older. *The Guardian review of his novel was just one line: Keeping up with the Jones. I’m quite certain that one line made him have another affair
The box contains the last vestige of my 40-year love affair with David