My Fair Man. Jane Gordon
you – with your high moral principles – really believe all that nonsense about nurture ruling over nature …’
‘Of course I do, Claire,’ Hattie protested. ‘I don’t just believe it, it’s what I’ve spent the last ten years of my life trying to do, I don’t want to be boring, I know I take things too seriously, but I do wish that sometimes you would listen to me. I know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen the way in which kindness and consideration can made an abused, tortured child blossom—’
‘What the hell has that got to do with a night at the opera, Hattie?’ said Jon, glancing over at Claire and raising his eyebrows. ‘Why don’t we leave the discussion for dinner? That’s if they hold on to our table. If Toby doesn’t hurry up and find a cab we’re going to be half an hour late.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Hattie said contritely, ‘but I’ve had a terrible day …’
She knew – because of patient confidentiality – that she couldn’t tell her friends the distressing details of her day or attempt in any way to justify her mood this evening. Instead she smiled at them and tried to swallow her pride – and her principles.
Then, as the three of them backed further into the darkened doorway, a piercing yelp erupted behind them.
‘Christ Almighty, I’ve trodden on something!’ shouted Jon.
‘What was it?’ said Claire, clearly alarmed.
‘A bloody dog.’ Jon jumped clear of the doorway.
Seconds later they heard another noise – a gutteral explosion that was definitely human – from behind them.
‘Haddaway, man …’
‘Pardon?’ enquired Jon.
‘Haddawayanshite,’ came the reply in what Hattie thought might be some northern provincial accent.
‘I think,’ said Hattie in her clipped, cut-glass English, ‘he is telling us to shut up and leave him and his dog alone.’
‘For God’s sake,’ said Jon irritably as his eyes made contact with the shape that had emerged from a pile of old bags and clothing behind them. ‘Why doesn’t he move on?’
There was, Hattie noticed as the man came closer to them, a horrible smell in the air that she sincerely hoped came from the dog skulking beside him. The figure’s hair hung in dreadlocked clumps around his face, obscuring his features and making it difficult to discern his age, though Hattie suspected he was very young.
‘For heaven’s sake, Jon, have you no compassion?’ she whispered, anxious not to offend the poor misfit before them. ‘Can you imagine what it would be like to be homeless?’
‘Oh spare me any more social comment this evening, please, Hattie.’
The man seemed unconcerned by their presence. In fact, Hattie realised as he slumped back against the cash-dispensing machine, he seemed oblivious to everything but the mongrel dog he was now comforting.
‘Perhaps, Hattie, he can’t get his card in the machine. Maybe his swipe’s gone,’ Jon whispered.
Hattie was incensed by Jon’s sarcasm. Moreover, the contrast between this sad, stinking stranger and the splendour of the Opera House over the road heightened her feeling of alienation from this whole evening.
‘Maybe he is trying to tell us something about ourselves,’ she muttered, bending down to stroke the whimpering dog but recoiling quickly when it snapped angrily at her.
‘Are you trying to imply that he’s making some kind of political statement, Hattie? Homeless man living in the doorway of a building society?’ said Jon.
‘For God’s sake, you two, stop arguing. Here’s Toby with the cab,’ said Claire impatiently.
Hattie held back as the others ran towards the taxi, unsure now whether she could bear to sit through dinner this evening.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said plaintively to the figure propped up against the wall. ‘I wish I could do something to help you …’
‘Bugger off,’ he spat back at her.
‘Here,’ said Hattie, searching in her bag for some money to give him, ‘take this …’
She was aware of his surprise at the generosity of her offering. He looked closely and steadily at her from large, unusually bright, blue eyes and then began hunting through a series of carrier bags that were situated, she could now make out, beside his sleeping bag.
‘Ha this, hinny,’ he said, thrusting a dog-eared copy of the Big Issue at her.
‘Hattie!’ screamed Toby from the cab. ‘Will you hurry up? We’re late enough as it is.’
She jumped in the back of the cab and pulled down one of the little seats. As the taxi moved away from the kerb she glanced back at the man, crouched down and gently stroking his dog, and wondered what tragedies in his life had led him to that doorway.
Even Hattie was cheered by their arrival at the restaurant. She wasn’t sure what had chilled her more this evening – the relentless rain, the pathos of the homeless boy or Jon’s behaviour. But warmed by the bright lights and the prospect of food she determined to forget about the incident in the doorway.
It was the kind of place that Toby loved, not for its food, but for its fashionableness. On the way to their table he had been acknowledged by several people – fellow lawyers, and political contacts Hattie presumed – whom he knew.
As they sat down Jon turned to Hattie and smiled in a placatory way. ‘Hattie, let’s forget our differences for the rest of the evening.’
She smiled back at him even though, however amusing he might be, she knew she could never forget their differences. Jon was a partner in one of the most successful advertising agencies of the moment – Riley, Toppingham and Futura – with a reputation as one of the best creative brains in the country. But despite his apparent political affiliations – he had been responsible for a recent highly praised campaign for the Labour Party – Hattie was wary of him. She disapproved of his professional devotion to what she saw as the brutal business of manipulating the public and she found his bleak cynicism depressing. But as he was Toby’s oldest – and probably only – friend she made an effort to tolerate him.
Hattie was rather fond of Claire, Jon’s companion this evening, despite the fact that she too made her living out of hype – or at any rate out of securing good publicity for a series of rather dubious clients. She was far preferable to any of the other empty women that Jon usually had in tow. Claire – an ex-girlfriend whom he had somehow managed to turn into a friend – had only joined them this evening because the latest woman in Jon’s life was, somewhat typically, married.
Hattie was very hungry, and eager to see the menu and order. There had been no time for lunch that day and she was not even sure that she had eaten breakfast, but her companions were more intrigued by the other diners and the décor.
Hattie, who had no curiosity about the famous, or infamous, was becoming aware of the dampness of her hair and the rain-spattered state of her clothes. Muttering her excuses she made her way down the brightly lit steel stairs to the loos.
She stood and looked at her reflection in the mirror for a second and pondered on the differences between herself and the sleek females who surrounded her. She didn’t really belong in this chic place, or rather she didn’t really want to belong. She was as uncomfortable here as she had been in the Opera House. And as much an outsider as the man camped in the Halifax doorway.
Not that Hattie wasn’t vain, in her own way. It was just that it wasn’t the way of these women. She didn’t really care about clothes or make-up, and she certainly wouldn’t put herself through the agony of wearing the kind of shoes – curious spike-heeled mules – that she had noticed a number of the women struggling to walk on.
Pushing a comb through her hair