Berberis' World

How does the rhyme go? Star light star bright…?

She wasn’t the first star I’d seen, but the second. I might have missed her had it not been for the battery of cameras and their erratic, rapid, pupil-shrinking flashbulbs. Then there were the star spotters crowded around in small groups of two or three, mainly mothers, daughters and young children, some openly, open mouthed, staring, others at a discreet distance, so they could say bitchy things about her without being overheard.

As with most stars, she shone; under all the combined wattage which bathed her, she didn’t dare not shine.  And she was small, smaller than I had imagined – pint sized would be how the red tops would describe her, in the broadsheets, she would be petite – and (dare I say this?) not as pretty as she appeared on the television or in pictures.

So I walked on past, casting her an almost derisory, perhaps even a malicious, glance, suddenly envious of her not-quite-so prettiness. And she stood smiling sweetly for the cameras, tossing her blonde head, flicking the ends of her hair provocatively around her face and shoulders.

She stood in a pose which reminds me now of one of those 1920’s flapper girls; one leg straight, the other bent at the knee, balancing precariously on the tips of its toes, a slight dip in the hip on that side, knee front and almost centre. On the same side, her arm was extended out at ninety degrees to her body, her fingers holding up a bag, the kind you get from the posher clothes shops, glossy and stiff with a plaited handle. Her other hand was on her hip. Her face was downcast, and she looked up out of her blue eyes towards to multifarious lenses, twinkling and shining.

The men holding the cameras called out to her, begging her to turn those twinkling eyes to them, pleading for her attention. They called out her name (do I mention it here? No, I don’t think I will.) as she flicked her gaze from the one circle of glass to the other, bestowed her sweet smile upon each of them in turn. And I walked on.

I wonder now whether I should have stayed and watched. I am, after all, supposed to be a writer, and to write you must observe, but I was caught in that odd state between awe and cynicism. When I see famous people in the street, part of me wants to rush up to them and feign some flattery, perhaps try to touch them to see whether they are real or merely facades. I haven’t, as yet, ever had the courage, or the cheek, to do this.

Living where I do, famous people are often to be seen walking the streets; I have seen Shakespearean actors, magazine editors, television stars, all in passing, and have talked about them out of their earshot and wondered if their ears burned, like my Mum said they always did when someone talked about you.

Perhaps if I’d stayed, I might have seen the boredom behind the twinkling eyes, the tiredness in the sweet smile, the droop of the shoulders as the posh bag became too heavy for her to hold in that ridiculous position. Maybe, as she shifted from one delicately boned foot to the other, she would have winced as the pretty shoes pinched, or sucked in her stomach so that it didn’t show under the flimsy little salmon pink dress she was wearing.

Maybe she would, as the lenses dropped away, have scratched her head, or her bum, or picked her nose. The sweet smile might have faded as she sensed the cameras’ attention waning, she may have done some inelegant and bizarre facial exercises to ease the ache in her cheeks and jaw from having to maintain the lovely upward curve of her pink and glossy lips.

And as she relaxed her legs, her hips might have shifted so that her perfect posture changed. Her abdominal muscles might have sagged, and her stomach would have showed itself under her frock. Not so much that she would look fat, or even a little bit podgy, but enough so that you knew she was a woman and not a young boy, all angles and flat planes.

Her shoulders might have dropped, perhaps allowing one of the tiny straps of the dress to slip over her St Tropez skin, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of the outer curve of her breast. And one of her entourage might have leaned over to restore the strap, and thus her dignity, to its rightful place.

Someone else might have brought her a chair so that she could sit down and slip the shoes from her aching feet. Perhaps her toes would be red and sore, squeezed as they are into the excruciatingly fashionable shoes. She might have reached down to massage them, restore the circulation to the white and cold digits.

Shoes like those were once called ‘winkle pickers.’ Goodness knows what they’re called now; I’ve seen shoes whose toes are so long that they curl up at the end. In medieval times, only court jesters would sport such ludicrous footwear, perhaps with little bells on the tips to announce their arrival.

And she might have sighed, asked or a cup of coffee, or a bottle of sparkling mineral water, or a milkshake from the nearby fast food outlet. Fawning and obsequious, a minion would have been dispatched to fetch whatever she desired, probably paying for it from their own pockets. Maybe they’d be happy to pay, so close as they are to the centre of attention that they could reach out and touch her, orbiting around the brightest star in their little universe.

I glanced at her over my shoulder and walked on.