My Fair Man. Jane Gordon
would be time to guide him up the little staircase to her bedroom. If she didn’t hold him back for a minute it would all be over before the espresso machine had finished.
‘Chris, Chris …’ she said, pushing him back a little, ‘let’s go upstairs …’
They part walked, part stumbled, part fucked their way up the stairs.
‘Oh GOD!’ he cried within seconds of reaching the bed and fully entering her. ‘Oh GOD!’ he screamed again. And then there was silence apart from the ticking of her bedside clock and the beating of her own disappointed heart. Then they lay there in what she could only describe as postcoital gloom for several minutes.
‘Are you going?’ she asked, astonished at the speed with which he had then got out of bed and dressed.
‘Yes, I think it’s best,’ he said. ‘Look, I’m sorry about this. I never meant it to happen …’
Oh that’s nice, she thought, so what did he think would happen when he asked to come in for a drink and then jumped on me?
He sat down on the bed and put his head in his hands.
‘What is your problem, Chris?’ she said.
‘Antonia,’ he replied.
‘What’s Antonia got to do with this?’
‘Everything. We’ve been having an affair for two years. It’s the only way we can get to see each other socially without Steve catching on. If she invites another single woman …’
‘How many of her single friends have you fucked in the cause of perpetuating Antonia’s marriage to Steve?’
‘Oh, you’re the first,’ he said, looking at her with what he obviously thought she would interpret as sincerity.
I’ve heard it all now, she thought, ‘Oh, you’re the first.’ She wondered if it weren’t innate in men to come out with that phrase whenever they were caught in an awkward situation with a woman. It seemed to spring to their lips as automatically as a yelp if they were kicked in the balls or, in Chris’s case, the name of the Lord when he reached his sexual climax (if you could call it that).
But then, she thought, perhaps she had been the first of Antonia’s decoys to fall for the cheap lines Chris had thrown at her. Probably he never thought she would invite him in and when she did some automatic male instinct had taken over. However much in love he was with Antonia he wasn’t actually going to turn down ten minutes (or was it five?) between the sheets with another woman. Men are like dogs, she thought as she watched him shuffling awkwardly beside her bed, that eat every meal regardless of their hunger just in case it’s their last. Chris had approached her like an extra tin of Chum that fortune had thrown his way. And now that he had partaken of her he looked as if he were going to be sick.
‘You won’t say anything to Antonia about this …?’ he said hesitantly.
He had a nerve.
‘Perhaps it would be more relevant if I talked to Steve,’ Claire said coolly.
‘Oh Christ, no!’ A tone of real desperation entered his voice. ‘He’s my oldest friend.’
‘Isn’t he the lucky one?’ Claire turned over in the bed and closed her eyes, hoping that when she opened them again he would have gone.
After an hour or so of tortured self-examination she finally fell into a fitful sleep that was punctuated by odd, recurring dreams of Jon in that brief period of her life years ago when she had felt in some way emotionally fulfilled.
Hattie had no intention of giving up on her mission, even if it took her all night. She spent the evening drifting round a savage network of streets in King’s Cross, trying to get a better idea of the world the homeless man inhabited. She felt strangely diminished by the experience, as if she, in walking through this sad nether world, were somehow homeless herself. And that feeling made her all the more determined to find the man whom fate had placed in her path on the previous evening.
At nightfall she decided to return to the beginning, the doorway where the argument resulting in the bet had started. In almost every entrance she passed there were bodies in sleeping bags and boxes. She wondered if these people came to the same place each night or if they selected their pitch by chance. If so, she thought as she approached the Halifax, it was unlikely that she would ever find him. There were three bodies lying amidst a clutter of carrier bags and clothing, and her heart began to race. Moving into the entrance she peered down to see if she could identify the boy.
‘Thank goodness I’ve found you,’ she said aloud, relief and hope flooding through her as she recognised him, his hand clasped round a length of blue rope on the end of which was his thin, nervous dog.
They both flinched when Hattie approached them, the dog setting up a high-pitched squealing bark designed, she supposed, to protect his master. The boy didn’t recognise her at first and when he did he thought she had come for her change.
‘Yous give me a tenner,’ he said, taking a few coins from his pocket and holding them out to her. At this the dog began to growl and jump up at Hattie, a menacing look in his eyes.
‘Doon, boy, doon,’ the boy said firmly yet gently to the insistent dog.
‘I meant you to have that money,’ she said.
‘But it’s only 80p …’ he said, looking at her suspiciously.
She realised now, as she stood before the boy, that her interest in him must seem, at the very least, odd. She couldn’t possibly tell him about Jon’s bet because, she realised, it was insulting and patronising and would, in any case, make her seem like some rich, bored socialite looking for a diversion. There was a silence between them – punctuated only by the squealing of his dog – whilst she searched for a way to appeal to him.
‘The thing is I want to help you. I really do,’ she stuttered. ‘My name is Hattie George and I want to help get you back into the real world …’
He looked her up and down, wondering if she had any conception of what the real world was like but he didn’t say anything. One of the other figures camped by him sniggered loudly. Hattie felt ridiculous.
‘My friend and I – well, we want to get you back on your feet. Find you somewhere to live, a job, new clothes, you know the kind of thing …’
There was a huge guffaw now from the two other men but her man still didn’t say anything. Her tone of voice became more beseeching and desperate as she continued with her plea. She realised that she must seem hysterical and maybe even a little deranged. But she was determined to convince him.
‘I’m on the level, honestly. Please don’t think this is some kind of trick,’ she said.
The two men beside him, friends of his perhaps, made some comment she couldn’t quite make out. But the man she had come to see ignored her and began to spread out his sleeping bag.
‘Aren’t you listening to me? I want to help you,’ she said despairingly.
‘Listen to her, man,’ said one of his friends.
‘Why?’ he said, looking at them and then back at her with haunted and uncomprehending eyes.
‘Because I can help you,’ she said again, faltering a little for fear of offending him.
‘Why me, like?’ he said in his surprisingly strong and rich accent which, she thought now, was a little like that of that footballer who was always making a fool of himself.
‘Look, why don’t we go and have a coffee somewhere and talk about this? It’s very important to me that you understand,’ she said.
‘Coffee?’ he said blankly.
‘Well, I don’t know – can’t we sit and talk somewhere?’
‘This is me home, like. Sit doon here,’ he said, indicating his sleeping bag on which the growling