Jane Gordon - My Fair Man

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 and putting a touch of Lipsyl on her dry mouth, she straightened her dress, sprayed herself with scent and made her way back up the slippery steel stairs. As she moved towards the table several other diners nodded in recognition.

‘Hattie spends so much of her time worrying about life’s underdogs that I always forget she has such a splendid pedigree herself,’ Jon said as he watched her dodging between tables.

‘Give her a break, Jon. It’s not as if she has ever really bothered with all her good contacts,’ said Claire equitably, ‘and nor has she profited by them.’

‘But Hattie doesn’t need to profit by them, does she? What with the trust fund and—’

‘Jon!’ said Claire, darting him a warning look as Hattie sat back down at the table.

At this point the food arrived and the distribution of the various designer dishes (‘French Vietnamese,’ declared Toby in an authoritative manner) prevented further argument. Hattie ate hungrily as Claire attempted to lighten the atmosphere with the kind of gossip that she loved.

‘Did you see Nigella’s review of this place in Vogue? ’

‘I am sure that Hattie doesn’t read Vogue ,’ interjected Jon with a wicked little smile. ‘In fact I’d say that the copy of the Big Issue that Hattie has peeping out of the top of her bag is much more to her taste. While all the other women here spend most of their lives searching out things that will confer on them the kind of exclusivity that Hattie was born with, she chooses to carry – not, what is it now, a Prada handbag? – but a battered old briefcase and a magazine that clearly signals to the world that here is a woman with a social conscience.’

‘That man gave it to me. The man we disturbed when we were waiting for Toby,’ said Hattie a little defensively.

‘I bet he bloody did. It’s my own personal belief that there are more people selling the Big Issue than there are homeless. There must be two dozen in Kensington High Street alone just waiting to trip you up. It’s brilliant marketing, though. You have to admire the way you can package guilt …’

Claire, in an effort to deflect Jon’s comments, continued to give them a potted version of what Nigella had thought about the food at Vong. Undeterred, Jon continued with his diatribe against the Big Issue .

Hattie shifted uncomfortably in her seat, determined this time not to rise to the bait. She had often wondered if Jon’s shocking comments and his black sense of humour were something of an act, designed to cover up a deeper sensitivity. Part of her suspected that he was as bored as she by Nigella and Vogue and all the idle chatter that seemed to fascinate Toby and Claire. Then, perhaps unaware of just how much the incident in the doorway had upset her, Jon began a diatribe on homelessness and the ‘underclass’, many of whom, he said with a provocative glance at Hattie, somehow ‘defied Darwin’s theory of evolution’.