The Parish Church is full to bursting. Light pours through the ancient stained-glass windows. The glorious notes of a Beethoven sonata fill the air.
I glance down at Chuck Berry’s shoes as the Minister’s voice intones those familiar words: “Who gives this woman?” I answer firmly: “I do.”
It was nineteen-eighty-something. I was a young man, free as air, making my way around Europe in what I suppose you’d now call a ‘gap year’. I’d arrived in Paris and, after a month of tatty, one-star hotels, decided to splash out and stay for one barely affordable night at the Hôtel d’Aubusson on Rue Dauphine.
I spotted him when I was checking in: Chuck Berry, the Poet Laureate of Rock ’n’ Roll, making his way to the elevator. He was dressed in a white suit and carried a small valise. I’d heard he was careful with money and usually travelled from one gig to another without an entourage, employing whatever session musicians were on hand for his live shows. After all, the adoring public came to hear the legendary Chuck Berry. Everything else was just sonic wallpaper.
My room on the third floor was as luxurious as I’d expected, and I treated myself to a hot bath and a few drinks before heading out for an evening’s excitement in the City of Light. As I waited for the lift, a door opened along the corridor and Chuck Berry stepped out, saw me and nodded. He set a pair of shoes down outside his door.
I’m sure it still happens in the best hotels nowadays: you leave your shoes outside your door, a porter takes them away, polishes them and returns them. Anyway, they did that thirty years ago, the last time I was able to splash out on a hotel of that quality.
Paris at night was a place of delight and wonder. I stumbled back around midnight, having imbibed one too many cocktails, and rode the lift up to the third floor.
Outside Chuck Berry’s door sat his newly polished shoes. In my inebriated state, I couldn’t resist the temptation to slip off my own shoes and try Chuck’s on. Amazingly, they fitted me perfectly, and, in that surreal state that alcohol can foster, it seemed natural for me to leave my own shoes outside his door and slip away in those highly polished brogues.
I woke the following morning with a thunderous hangover and noticed the shoes by my bed. I grabbed them, fought down a wave of nausea and embarrassment, and set off to apologise and return them.
I was too late. A maid was busy cleaning Chuck Berry’s room when I arrived, and enquiries at Reception confirmed that the great man had checked out.
I’ve had these shoes for nearly thirty years now. Wingtip brogues in soft two-tone leather, a bit flash maybe, probably quite old-fashioned, but I’ll never part with them.
I wore them when Jill and I were married and later when each of the children was christened, and today I’m wearing them again at Anne, our daughter’s, wedding.
Nowadays, I don’t feel much guilt about pinching those shoes. In the last forty years, I’ve bought enough of Chuck’s records to have paid for them twice over.
Editor’s Notes
• Known as the “Father of Rock and Roll,” Charles Edward Anderson “Chuck” Berry (October 18, 1926 – March 18, 2017) reshaped rhythm and blues into the signature sound of rock and roll through groundbreaking classics such as Maybellene (1955) and Roll Over Beethoven (1956).
• Guernsey-based poet and humorist Richard Fleming is an acclaimed literary voice whose work fuses sharp wit, lyricism and emotional depth.
