Jane Gordon - My Fair Man

‘Do you know, Jon,’ said Claire quickly, ‘just for a minute I thought you were talking about your ex-girlfriend before last – you know, the blonde with the frontal lobotomy …’

‘You’ll have to remind me which one you mean,’ said Hattie, grinning. ‘I thought all Jon’s girlfriends shared those characteristics – lots of blonde hair and one brain cell. Apart from you, Claire.’

‘You know I’m the only intelligent woman Jon ever went out with. Nowadays he’s hopelessly drawn to women whose vital statistics add up to more than their IQs,’ said Claire, exchanging a smile with Hattie.

‘Anyway, Jon,’ said Hattie with gathering courage, ‘I don’t go along with all this business about an underclass. If there is a growing number of people who are slipping through the net educationally and socially it’s because of lack of opportunity and poverty. If any of us around this table had been born into different circumstances we too might have become a part of your underclass.’

‘Not with our genetic advantages,’ said Jon, smiling patronisingly at Hattie. ‘All those things we have got – our intelligence, for example – are locked into our genetic make-up waiting to be passed on to the next generation.’

‘No, Jon. Let me quote Professor Steve Jones, the man on genetics, on this one. “The single most important thing that a child can inherit from its parents is money,” he says. You might like to think that you have the kind of genes that could triumph over poverty but in fact I doubt that they are any more interesting – let alone superior – to those of that man we stumbled across tonight. All men are born equal ,’ said Hattie.

‘But some, thanks to their genes, are born more equal than others,’ said Jon with another one of his infuriatingly patronising grins. ‘People are either born with good genes, like mine and like yours, Hattie – if, of course, yours aren’t too inbred – or with a DNA of doom. Why do you think that man’s on the streets while we are in this restaurant?’

‘Money,’ Claire said. ‘Your parents bought you the privileges you enjoy. The best education that money can buy. And the right contacts.’

‘Meanwhile,’ continued Hattie, ‘his parents were probably living on Government handouts and threw him out when he was no longer eligible for child benefit. If he had been given your advantages I dare say he’d be doing something more intelligent than you are now – attacking the defenceless—’

‘Here we go again, back to Hattie’s charitable mission. Do you really believe that that vagrant in the doorway could, in any circumstances, be transformed into a useful member of society?’ Jon asked.

‘Why not?’ Claire and Hattie said in unison.

‘In my work, Jon, I am only too aware that it is perfectly possible to take even the most desperate, desolate and destitute being and help them to achieve their potential,’ said Hattie earnestly, thinking of the little girl she had encountered that day.

There was an uneasy silence, during which Jon looked intently at Hattie.

‘If you really want to impress me, prove me wrong. I bet that you couldn’t redeem that man we tripped over tonight,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’ said Hattie, sitting up in her seat.

‘What I say. I bet you couldn’t redeem that man – as a kind of wager. You can walk into a betting shop and put money on anything from man walking on Mars to England winning the World Cup. I’m prepared to bet you that you cannot change that man. That it wouldn’t be possible to take him off the streets and turn him into someone who could join us at this table for dinner. That it wouldn’t be possible to transform him into a man of worth.’

‘A real bet? A financial bet?’ Claire asked, as suddenly interested as Hattie.

‘Well, I know money’s not important to Hattie – or you really, Claire – but I’m sure it’s bloody important to that man. So yes, let’s do this properly. Let’s put some money on it. Prove to me that I am wrong about him in – let me see – three months from today, and I’ll pay him £5000. If you don’t then I’ll have this month’s interest from your trust fund,’ he said to Hattie with another of those grins that made her want to hit him.

Hattie glanced at Claire, unsure whether Jon was sober enough to be serious.

‘What is your definition of worth, Jon?’ asked Claire.

‘Someone you could pass off in polite society.’

‘You mean at the Royal Opera House and a pretentious restaurant? Someone that the chattering classes would perceive as one of their own?’ said Hattie sneeringly.

‘Yes. But more than that. He’d have to be employed, or at any rate employable. He’d have to be able to carry out a civilised conversation. He’d have to have an appreciation of the finer things of life and be able to satisfy me that he is intelligent. He would have to look, behave and react as if all this were natural to him. And he would have to pass a test that I would devise,’ said Jon, swinging back confidently in his chair.

‘God, you are so arrogant,’ said Claire sharply. ‘It would give me so much pleasure to prove you wrong that I would happily risk losing any amount of money. What kind of test would it be?’

‘He’d have to be able to prove to a room full of people like this – the chattering classes if that’s what you insist on calling them, Hattie – that he was the genuine article. A man of worth.’

‘Three months?’ mused Claire

‘Your chance, Hattie,’ said Jon with a slight sneer, ‘to put into practice all your wonderful theories of nurture ruling over nature. And your chance, Claire, to get back at me …’

‘Just twelve weeks,’ said Hattie doubtfully.

‘So you don’t believe it’s possible either ?’ said Jon with glee.

‘Of course it’s possible!’ Hattie exclaimed, glancing at Claire for confirmation that she was still on her side.

Oh the back of a menu Jon began to write out, in fountain pen, his version of a betting slip.

‘I promise to pay £5000 if in three months from this day, 16 May, Claire Martin and Hattie George can transform a tramp into the talk of the chattering classes, signed Jon Riley.’

‘Take it or leave it,’ he said.

‘We’ll take it,’ said Hattie.

‘Then write out your response,’ he said, passing the pen across to Claire.

‘Claire Martin and Hattie George promise to pay Jon Riley £5000 if, in three months’ time, they have failed to prove him wrong …’ she said aloud as she wrote the words beneath those of Jon. ‘Here, Hattie, now you sign.’

Hattie took the menu from Claire and signed it. Then, very carefully, she placed it inside her battered briefcase where it lay nestled against her still damp copy of the Big Issue .

The strip of light that had worked its way through the crack in the shutters told Hattie that it must be morning. That and the fast breathing of Toby who had been too weary and drunk to make love the night before and was now attempting to redress his usual balance (it was Saturday after all) with some fairly basic foreplay.

She wished he would stop. She didn’t like sex first thing in the morning before she had brushed her teeth or showered. But then she probably didn’t like it that much last thing at night either. She was, though, far too kind to upset Toby by telling him that she didn’t want him. Or to break it to him that the earth had never really moved for her, that in fact when it came to sex she was a founder member of the flat earth society, unable to imagine that, even on its axis in space, it could ever achieve motion.

Claire had recently confessed how she had once told some man, in flagrante , to get off her and go home. He had sat weeping into his wilting manhood at the bottom of her bed. But she had not relented. If Hattie were as honest as Claire she would probably have told Toby on more than one occasion to go away and leave her alone. But Hattie approached her partner in rather the way that she approached her patients. The only kind of passion she really felt for him was the occasional bout of compassion .